Tens of thousands of South Australians are still without power after intense storms swept across the state over the weekend.
Trees have been felled, powerlines downed, homes damaged, streets closed, and business stock spoiled — but the full economic impact is unlikely to become known for days, although the total cost has already been estimated in the millions of dollars.
“[Power outages] were stretching from the middle of Eyre Peninsula, right through Yorke Peninsula, the Mid North, metro area, through the Riverland and Murraylands and down to the south-east — it was a really massive impact,” SA Power Networks spokesperson Paul Roberts said.
For some, the widespread power outages have been reminiscent of South Australia’s infamous statewide blackout.
Here’s how the two events measure up, based on what we know so far.
Weekend storms leaves thousands in the dark
At its peak, Saturday’s weather resulted in the loss of power to more than 160,000 homes and businesses — easily the largest number since the 2016 blackout.
“We had 163,000 customers without power due to this storm event, terrible winds and lightning and trees falling on Saturday,” Mr Roberts said on Monday morning.
On September 28, 2016, more than 850,000 properties were impacted by power cuts that lasted for hours, with some going without power for days.
But Mr Roberts said that the current situation was, despite the lower number of impacted properties, “worse in terms of our ability to recover from it” because of a fundamental dissimilarity between the events — the extent of localised damage.
“It’s going to take much longer for us to recover from this one than it did the statewide blackout, [when] most people were back on in the evening and overnight that day,” he explained.
“We’re really having to rebuild many parts of the network which have been damaged by big trees that have fallen on lines, all sorts of damage, which requires rebuilding — not just reconnecting supply.
“The statewide blackout was essentially reorganising supply … whereas this is actually about rebuilding the network.”
Intense weather triggers cuts
Both the statewide blackout and the latest power cuts were precipitated by intense weather.
A staggering 423,000 lighting strikes occurred in 18 hours on Saturday, while the State Emergency Service has received about 2,000 calls for assistance in the past couple of days.
“The sheer amount of calls that we receive in such a short period of time [means] it will take time for our crews to get around and attend those tasks,” state duty officer Brenton Clarke said.
