Thousands of VIC homes and businesses still without power
More than 75,000 Victorian homes, businesses and some hospitals are still without power after Tuesday’s storms.
Transcript
00:00 There are still 76,000 homes and businesses across the state without power.
00:06 They spent a second night in darkness last night as energy companies scrambled to get
00:10 as many back online as quickly as they can.
00:12 There have been more than 400,000 properties that have had power restored since the height
00:18 of the outage during those devastating storms on Tuesday which took down transmission towers
00:23 in parts of the state in what was one of the worst power outages Victoria has ever seen.
00:28 Here in Clayton in Melbourne South East, an entire row of shops behind me still blocked
00:32 off, power lines still on the side of the road and fallen trees lining the edge of the
00:36 street on the other side of the road.
00:38 It's a scene that's being repeated in so many parts of the state right now, especially over
00:43 in Gippsland in the state's east, one of the worst hit areas.
00:46 Several properties and houses destroyed in the storms, one man confirmed dead.
00:51 There are still as you said five hospitals running on generator power and yesterday we
00:54 saw 80 schools and early childhood centres closed, we're still expecting more than 50
00:59 to remain closed today as they wait for power to come back online.
01:02 We heard from Ausnet, one of the major providers this morning, they're saying they're expecting
01:06 about half of the 76,000 properties to have power restored today by six o'clock this evening.
01:13 They say the current focus is to get the areas where they can get as many people back online
01:17 as quickly as they can.
01:18 They're hoping another group will come back online by Saturday but they have warned it
01:23 could take days if not weeks to get the full 76,000 power back online here in Victoria.
01:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]