Life without power is becoming the norm for thousands of Tasmanians. Some households in the north and northwest have gone more than a week without electricity, and TasNetwork is warning, for many, it could be another week before they are reconnected.
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00:00Railton resident, Angela Wells, has had a new soundtrack to life in the past fortnight.
00:09A generator.
00:11It allows us to watch a bit of TV over night time, have a bit of internet.
00:16She's spent much of the past two weeks without power all day, but she's adapting.
00:21Cooking with gas, lighting with torches and taking cold showers.
00:26That's one change she's looking forward to when her home's reconnected.
00:30It's a shower. Just being able to go and have a hot shower.
00:34Cold is less of a problem when it comes to the beer at the Railton Hotel.
00:39Thankfully, they've maintained power and opened up their doors to the town.
00:44We have a camping shower out the back so they can come and have a free shower anytime they like.
00:48And give them a bit of support, charge their phones etc, lights, anything they need doing.
00:53The neighbourhood house is storing food for those without power.
00:57Staff also reaching out to isolated residents.
01:01A few of those people come here and we help them just by purely having company coming here and interacting and having community.
01:11TAS Networks has sustained severe damage to more than 20% of its network.
01:17There are around 100 outages left, mostly in the north and northwest.
01:22The company says these will be the slowest and most complex to restore.
01:27Some may take a week or longer.
01:29A lot of the customers that are off now are literally on the end of the line.
01:32And when I mean end of the line, that could be 50 to 100 kilometres long, these lines.
01:36With 20 to 30 poles down in 20 to 30 different locations.
01:39So that's the complexity we're looking at.
01:41Crews have flown in from interstate and been deployed from Hobart.
01:45600 people have accessed emergency food grants of $350.
01:51They're still available to those who spent 72 hours or longer without power.