Students told to stay home from school as 4200 Perth homes and businesses were still without power

Parents at a Perth school have been told to keep their kids at home on Wednesday and thousands of homes and businesses remain without power more than 24 hours after rain caused dozens of pole top fires.

An email sent to parents of students at Emmanuel Catholic College in Success on Tuesday evening said it was “strongly advised” students worked from home on Wednesday with power not expected to be restored until 4pm.

“Further to the College being without power today, Western Power have advised it may not be restored until 4pm tomorrow,” the email said.

“With a rise in temperature and another day without power, I appreciate this could be very challenging and in addition we will not be able to provide any canteen facilities.

“I would strongly encourage our students to remain and work from home tomorrow.

“Whilst far from ideal, it will provide opportunity for students to catch up on any work they may have slipped behind on or be proactive and work on upcoming assessments.

“Any scheduled assessments will be postponed to the next viable date and students given at least 24 hrs notice.”

In the latest update on Wednesday morning, Western Power said there power outages were still impacting 4200 buildings.

“The areas most impacted include Beechboro, Hocking, Thornlie, Balga, Balcatta, and Craigie,” they said.

“The outages resulted from pole damage due to light, drizzly weather causing pole top fires.

“Our crews priority is making the network safe and preventing potential additional damage.

“Once hazards are made safe, we isolate damaged parts of the network and backfeed where possible to restore power.”

Western Power acknowledged the outages were a source of “inconvenience and frustration”.

“Please be assured we’re continuing to work as quickly as possible to safely restore power.”

“We thank the community for their patience.”

Roger Cook was forced to apologise on Tuesday after 40,000 homes and businesses were plunged into darkness at the peak of the outages.

Drizzly rain was blamed for sparking 63 pole top fires in suburbs from Hamilton Hill to Hocking, with suburbs including Girrawheen, Beechboro, Balcatta, The Vines, Balga, Caversham, Wanneroo, Kelmscott and Duncraig also affected.

It was the the second major round of power outages caused by pole top fires this year after metropolitan and rural properties went up to almost a week without power in January.

By 5pm Monday more than 9000 homes were still without power with residents warned those who had not had their electricity returned by 8pm to expect a night without power.

Pure and Natural Honey Co director Liam Ross said he had to send staff home and keep the factory doors shut due to a lack of power in Landsdale.

“Our employees have had to be sent home and we’re unable to operate today,” he said.

“It’s causing a loss of income for us and substantial headaches.”

Mr Ross estimated his business would lose up to $3000 in lost sales.

“It’s not just myself, it’s my employees as well they had to be sent some without pay as they’re casual, so this impacts them as well as me,” he said.

“My employees arrived at work this morning and couldn’t open the roller door, they’ve basically gone to work and then had to be sent home.”