Perth power outages: Thousands of homes and businesses spend second day without electricity

Thousands of homes and businesses spent a second day without power as temperatures soared to 34C in parts of Perth on Wednesday.

Parents at a Perth school were also told to keep their kids at home due to having no 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 (sic) notice.”

No public schools were closed.

In the latest update on Wednesday afternoon, Western Power said the power outages were still impacting 830 buildings, down from 4200 at the start of the day.

“The areas most impacted include Balga, Seville Grove, Beechboro, Morley, Kiara, Lockridge and Stirling.” they said.

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

“We appreciate the inconvenience and frustration outages cause, please be assured crews are working as quickly and safely as possible to repair damaged network infrastructure and restore power.

“We thank the community for their patience.”

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

“Due to the volume of incidents, and complex repair work required in some areas, some customers have been without power for an extended period,” they said.

“Estimated restoration times are on the Western Power website and we’re contacting affected customers via SMS.

“We expect power will be restored to the majority of customers today.”

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

On Wednesday, the Premier said it was “the nature” of energy grids to experience outages.

“These outages do occur, so on behalf of the government can I just express my thanks to the people of Western Australia impacted by these outages for your patience and assure you that Western Power is doing everything we can to reconnect them as soon as possible,” he said in Albany.

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.

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 on Tuesday.

“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.”