Farmers in WA’s Wheatbelt still without power nearly a week after ‘tornado’-like storm

About 1,000 properties are still without electricity five days after a storm tore through the West Australian Wheatbelt with a destructive power that has been compared to that of a tornado.

The storm knocked down transmission towers, power lines and trees, and damaged property in the region on Wednesday.

Kulin farmer John Waters said the damage at his home was like nothing he had seen before.

“I would say it was similar to a tornado because some of the sheds have gone sideways, but I don’t think it was just small,” he said.

“Our farm is approximately 15 kilometres long and 14 kilometres of it has got damage so I am thinking in the middle was the worst.

“The middle seven kilometres, the roads are completely laden with trees.”

Power getting restored

Western Power said 182 poles in the Wheatbelt region were damaged by storms on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a further 46 from a fire at Wongan Hills. 

Telstra’s WA regional general manager Boyd Brown said services had been restored on all but seven mobile sites from a peak of 200. 

He said most were affected by a lack of power but crews had assessed those still not functioning and were awaiting replacement equipment. 

“I think the lightning was the thing that did the damage. You know, it’s fried a few things,” Mr Brown said. 

“There’s a little bit of work to be done but we’ll be hoping to get those back up and running as quick as possible.”

Western Power said power had been restored to the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area in the Goldfields region through a combination of its network assets, Synergy’s back-up generator and a local privately-owned generator.

“Work is continuing to assess options and finalise the solution for the rebuild of the 220-kilovolt transmission line,” a spokesperson said.

“Poles were transported to site yesterday and work commenced to source specialist equipment needed.”

That work is expected to take seven to eight days. 

The utility provider also reconnected hundreds of properties in the Perth hills last night and said crews were working as quickly and safely as possible on reconnecting customers in Mt Helena, Gidgegannup, Stoneville and Mundaring.

Meanwhile, the Water Corporation is asking customers to be conservative with water in response to ongoing restoration work.

Clean-up continues

Mr Waters sustained damage to the home, several sheds, and nearly every fence was on the ground.

He estimates restoration to his fences will take at least a year.

“From a distance we could just see black clouds but the neighbours said it looked really nasty here and they could see it was terrible underneath the storm [with] dust storms,” Mr Waters said. 

“When we drove in our driveway, there was just carnage, trees everywhere and we couldn’t actually get in the driveway. We had to shift trees to get in the driveway.

“We could see our garage door was half way towards the road from our house and that is when we realised we had a fair bit of damage.

“I have never seen anything like it, to tell the truth.” 

‘Very disappointing’

Natalie Gambuti lives on a farm 20km out of the eastern-Wheatbelt town of Lake Grace and Monday was her fifth day without power.

Ms Gambuti is one of about a thousand Wheatbelt residents still waiting to hear when their power will be restored.

“[I’ve heard] pretty much nothing, every time you go on [the website] it says there is power outages, and the restoration period is unknown,” she told ABC Radio Perth.

Ms Gambuti is running her household off two generators, costing about $80 a day in fuel, which she said quickly used up the relief payment from Western Power.

“Not everybody has a generator, you’ve got elderly who have no form of any cooling,” she said.

“Most people this time of year have full freezers, they’ve done a kill or have got a heap of supplies.

“It’s very disappointing that in this day and age we’re still having these issues.”