Around 33,000 homes in Victoria are still without power three days after a severe storm swept through the state and wreaked havoc on its path.
Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan has disclosed the latest figure as her government concentrates efforts on dealing with the aftermath of a series of natural disasters hitting the state earlier this week.
As a result, up to 530,000 homes were disconnected from the power grid, marking one of the worst outage events in Victoria’s history.
Despite the state government’s efforts in the past few days, a significant number of homes remain without power.
While the Victorian government expects most of the 33,000 homes to be reconnected to the grid by the evening of Feb. 17, approximately 3,000 houses would remain without power until next week.
Amid the significant damage to the state’s power distribution and transmission network during the storm, Ms. Allan did not rule out the idea of moving the power lines underground.
However, the premier noted that there was a need to strengthen the above-ground network, saying there should not be a blanket approach to the power transmission system.
“It depends on the terrain. It depends on the ground conditions. You can’t have a uniform approach,” she said.
“There’s also some reports that underground power lines can also be challenging to find and fix.”
Ms. Allan then said the focus of her government at this stage was to resume power connection to affected residents as soon as possible.
She also advised people who lost power to reach out to government agencies for additional support and payments.
