Saturday, January 31, 2009

Victoria not coping well

Victoria without power for days

POWER outages caused by an explosion at an electrical substation wreaked havoc across heatwave-stricken Victoria last night.

All Melbourne train services were cancelled and about 500,000 homes and businesses were left without electricity in the city's west, some parts of the CBD and western Victoria....

Connex staff told thousands of commuters at Flinders Street Railway Station trying to get home at the end of the working week that they would have to find other means of travel because there was no power for trains.

A number of city buildings were evacuated, with the firemen called in to rescue office workers trapped in stalled lifts.

Traffic lights in the city stopped working and signals on the rail network also failed.

How about this potentially expensive offer:

Power retailer Jemena offered to pay $150 towards the costs of hotels for residential customers who have been without power for 24 hours.
I'll be waiting to hear the story of some poor family that leaves their powerless home for a night in an airconditioned hotel, only to get stuck in an unairconditioned lift for 3 hours.

2 comments:

TimT said...

I caught a bus instead of a train and walked all the way home. When I got back the power was out but the cool change had come through, so I opened everything up and went out on the balcony with everyone else in the apartment block. It was sweet!

I know this is bad news for a lot of people, and I'm not too happy about the power cuts for others, but things could have turned out worse, personally speaking.

TimT said...

'And walked all the way home' should have been 'and walked the rest of the way home'.