Volunteer firefighters were left without essential mobile communications while battling two serious fires in Western Australia’s Midwest over the weekend after an extended power outage saw mobile phone towers fail.
More than 22,000 homes and businesses in the Midwest lost power on Saturday night when lightning struck the transmission network and damaged around 30 poles.
Most customers were offline for more than 20 hours, with some not restored until midday on Monday.
The Mungarra power station, which is usually backup support for Geraldton’s power, was undergoing planned maintenance when the storm struck.
Severe weather also saw thousands of customers lose power in other parts of the Midwest and Wheatbelt, as well as the Perth metropolitan area, taking the total number at the peak to 115,000.
Volunteers spent the weekend battling multiple blazes in the Midwest. (Supplied: Andrew Vlahov)
Outage creates risky fire response
Chapman Valley Shire chief bushfire control officer Andrew Vlahov said volunteers were battling an emergency-level blaze at Howatharra, north of Geraldton, when mobile connectivity was largely lost early on Sunday morning, making conditions on the fireground even more challenging.
Mr Valhov said mobile phone towers had about five hours of battery life before they stopped working.
“The next morning I wanted to continue the harvest ban, and update people on what was going on, and get more people over there to help us out,” he said.
“There was no communication whatsoever, [mobile] towers at Yuna and I think at Howatharra all ran their batteries down to depleted.”
Mr Valhov said he was “lucky” to have a satellite communication and generator system at home, which allowed him to send word through information by word of mouth and two-way radio that help was needed.
“It just shows how vulnerable we are once the power goes down,” he said.
“It’s life and death, some of this stuff, and you’ve got no power and got no cell service.”
Communication was still limited when volunteers were called to a fast-moving fire near Yuna, east of Geraldton, on Sunday afternoon in hot and windy conditions.
Volunteers were left with limited mobile connectivity after an extended power outage. (Supplied: Andrew Vlahov)
“We had experienced firefighters there and some of them were quite scared yesterday,” he said.
“I told the guys if it’s too dangerous, get out, we only had two-way [radios] and in dust and smoke the two-ways were even a bit scratchy yesterday.”
An Optus spokesperson says people would have been able to make Triple Zero (000) calls if an alternative provider was available. (ABC Riverland: Catherine Heuzenroeder)
Telco relies on power
Telstra regional general manager Boyd Brown said there were ongoing outages affecting the network.
“Our backup power systems kept many services online for as long as possible but our network sites can use the same amount of power as 10 homes every day, so disruptions will occur if power’s out for a long time,” he said.
“We’re working closely with authorities to get in and restore affected services as soon as possible when it’s safe to do so.”
Western Power says power poles were struck by lightning over the weekend. (Supplied: Tayla Fairclough)
An Optus spokesperson said they were aware of outages impacting NBN, mobile voice and data services in regional WA and the Perth metropolitan area.
“We are prioritising the deployment of generators to key sites to bring them online until power is restored,” they said.
“Calls to emergency services [Triple Zero (000)] remain a priority and are being closely monitored. If you need to call Triple Zero, your call will still connect using an alternative carrier if one is available.”
On Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for Telstra said 31 sites were “down” at 4pm, including Warradarge and Chittering.
“We’re continuing to do our best to keep generators and batteries going and we’ll be out and about to finalise restoration as soon as we can,” a spokesperson said.
Mr Christmas said the outage was been the largest since 2010. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)
Calls for compensation
Across Perth and the Midwest, about 115,000 Western Power customers experienced power outages, which Western Power asset operations executive manager Zane Christmas said was the biggest outage for the state since 2010.
The utility offered customers who had experienced power loss for over 12 hours the chance to apply for a $120 payment.
“It’s not a compensation scheme, it’s essentially an acknowledgement of the inconvenience,” Mr Christmas said.
“I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and our crews and support staff have been working around the clock to restore power as quickly as possible.”
Midwest Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Joanne Fabling said businesses were significantly impacted by the outage.
Joanne Fabling says businesses are out of pocket. (ABC Midwest Wheatbelt: Phoebe Pin)
“On any given day, if you’ve got a restaurant that’s closed, you’re going to be throwing out your food stocks,” Ms Fabling said.
“We’re going into a critical time, Christmas, so that limits your ability to be able to reorder and get that food restocked.
“You’ll have staff that you will have to pay but stand down. So the losses would have been substantial for any business.”
Ms Fabling said the weekend’s events exposed the vulnerability of businesses relying on an above-ground power supply.
“Until we can get some further investment in how we look to renewables, or having battery storage, we’re always going to be a little bit vulnerable to weather events,” she said.
