More than 20,000 homes and businesses are currently without power and there have been hundreds of calls to the State Emergency Service (SES) for assistance over a weekend of wild weather in South Australia.
Key points:
- SA Power Networks says it is working to get power restored to homes, businesses as soon as possible
- SES crews have responded to more than 500 calls for assistance over the weekend
- The BOM says places in the Mounty Lofty Ranges received 75ml of rain overnight
Damaging winds, lightning strikes and record rainfall lashed the state overnight, including metropolitan Adelaide where thousands of people are waking up without electricity.
SA Power Networks’ Paul Roberts told ABC Radio Adelaide they had been worried about the conditions that were forecast and were working to get people’s power restored as soon as they possibly could.
“We’ll get crews out there — obviously we’ve rostered crews to work through from last night,” Mr Roberts said.
“We will be out there in force again today to restore power as soon as we can.”
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SES state duty officer, Cane Murray, told ABC radio Adelaide they had received more than 500 calls for assistance from this weekend’s weather event alone, with more than 300 of those occurring on Sunday.
“There has been a bit of a sting of a tail from this severe weather system,” Mr Murray said.
“Most of those have been for trees down — people have had water entering their property through the roof.
“We have up-scaled our preparedness and we are ready for the tail end of this system.”
Senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology, John Fischer told ABC Radio Adelaide showers and storms are forecast for Adelaide “on and off through the day”.
Mr Fischer said the state saw a significant amount of rain throughout the weekend.
“A lot of places pretty much rained from sunrise to sunset,” he said.
“The highest total within 24 hours from 9am on Sunday morning was in the Mount Lofty Ranges with 75 millimetres.”