Thousands of Broken Hill residents are without power as a back-up generator fails in Far West NSW

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Major power outages at Broken Hill in Far West NSW have forced the closure of state schools, with authorities warning it could be a fortnight before a stable flow of electricity is restored

Transcript

00:00To say that power has been unreliable here for the last couple of days would probably

00:06be an understatement.

00:08The power went out on Wednesday night last week after a storm came across the far west,

00:13and people had in Broken Hill their power restored by Wednesday morning, but others

00:17in areas like Wilcannia and Menindee didn't have theirs back until Friday.

00:21Since then, Transgrid had to do maintenance on the sole remaining generator that we had

00:27in town, and that went well as they said at the time, but since then, as of last night,

00:34or as 5pm last night, the generator tripped as they say, and they're still investigating

00:38why that issue came up, why that's happening.

00:42We're not expecting to get power back in Broken Hill or more broadly in the far west until

00:46later this afternoon, and so naturally people are really frustrated.

00:50We spoke with a local business owner, Abigail Hughes, a little bit about this, so we'll

00:54hear from her.

00:56The staff don't know when they're going to be able to come in and work, we've pretty

00:59much just put everything on hold for now.

01:00I know, look, the workers here on the ground, the central energy, a lot of those guys, you

01:04know, we see them every day, you know, they're working their hearts out to kind of get the

01:08power back on, but you know, this should never have happened in the first place.

01:15I don't really know what much more to say, it's so frustrating, it's ridiculous.

01:19So it was announced last night that the Storm Recovery Commonwealth State Fund will be granted

01:25for this area, and so essentially that's recognising that this was a significant weather

01:29event, a natural disaster of a kind, and so councils, with that funding, councils will

01:33be able to use the funding for clean-up and to restore damage to any public assets.

01:39It'll also provide essential power for homes, schools, hospitals and that sort of thing.

01:43Any essential power during that time, that funding will go towards that, but we don't

01:46know what the exact amount of funding being given is yet, so that's something that a lot

01:51of locals are still waiting to hear on.

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