When the power went out in the small town of Woodside, in Victoria’s east, Tony Palmer’s immediate concern was for his wife.
Mrs Palmer’s dialysis machine must operate for 10 hours a day to flush the required six litres of glucose through her body.
“She sets it up at night and it runs while she’s asleep,” Mr Palmer said.
“Any interruptions in the power … the machine shuts itself off and she’s got to get up and manually run it through herself.”
It was the second time in three years eastern Victoria experienced a prolonged power outage and this time the Palmers were prepared.
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As of 3:30pm on Thursday almost 60,000 homes and businesses were without power across the state, 55,919 of which were AusNet services customers in the east.
“Vegetation clearing and repairs to damaged powerlines and poles continue,” a Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action spokesperson said.
“However, given the extent of the widespread damage, it may still take days or more than a week in extreme circumstances to restore electricity to all of those impacted.”
‘Seems to happen a lot’
During floods in 2021, the Palmers purchased a $3,500 generator to ensure Mrs Palmer’s essential at-home medical treatment could continue.
The Palmers are considered power-dependent — a designation that includes people who are on life support or other crucial medical needs.
“The generator was bought solely to run the dialysis machine,” Mr Palmer said.
“It was the last generator left that I could buy.”
But the situation was complicated by a lack of operational fuel stations in the Woodside area and Mr Palmer had to drive 45 minutes to fill up his jerry cans.
“You can’t get fuel in Woodside or Yarram, so we had to come to Sale,” he said.
Mr Palmer is calling for better infrastructure in small Gippsland towns to eliminate the chance of outages like this one.
“It’s just a nuisance and it seems to happen a lot,” he said.
Feeling the heat
Nikodinas Flowers florist Barbara Schubel was gearing up for a busy Valentine’s Day when the power went out at her Bass store.
“Our cool room’s without power and our shop heated up pretty quickly,” she said.
Concerned the flowers would die, Ms Schubel made the decision to relocate all of her stock to her living room.
“We are lucky enough to have our home right next door to our shop,” she said.
“Because I had the aircon on earlier, the whole house was quite cool, so I bought all the flowers in and pretty much set up shop in our house.”
Ms Schubel said she was grateful to not make a loss on what should have been one of the busiest days of the year.
“We have pretty much broken even,” she said.
“I have a lot of flowers left over.”
Following a spate of weather emergencies, many residents across Gippsland have expressed their frustration at the lack of support from power and telecommunications companies and the reliability of local infrastructure.
“It was quite distressing, we couldn’t even get triple zero calls out,” Ms Schubel said.
“Hopefully it won’t happen again, but everyone, I think, needs to have a plan.
“Have fuel in your generator, have back-up plans … I’m even looking at getting a satellite phone.”
Others not so lucky
On the other side of Victoria, Spring Gully General Store owner Adam Nicoletti said he was left thousands of dollars out of pocket after the Bendigo business lost power for almost 24 hours.
He said it was looking unlikely that his insurer would cover the costs, which included lost revenue, food costs and wages.
“It just means we’re out of pocket,” Mr Nicoletti said.
The cafe lost its refrigerated stock and could not open on Valentine’s Day.
Mr Nicoletti had three chefs working to get the cafe back up and running.
The cafe was able to reopen with a limited menu on Thursday.
Pub on the brink of shutting down
Nearly 50 kilometres north, a central Victorian publican said he had thrown out $2,600 worth of food since Christmas because of power outages.
The Dingee Hotel has lost refrigerated stock four times in the past two months.
Publican Michael Kerkman says it costs about $2,500 a week to keep the doors open.
He said he would have struggled to cover the lease payment if two employees had not lent him their generators after this week’s storms, allowing an event to go ahead and preventing most of the stock loss.
“The freezers were plugged into the generators, we had lights going, we didn’t lose all the meat this time,” Mr Kerkman said.
The pub and the Dingee community are still recovering from flooding in the region over the festive season.
“We didn’t get any water in the premises, but we have a lot of groundwater and it’s a daily pump out with the cellar, and the groundwater’s still seeping in,” Mr Kerkman said.
He said getting money out of an insurance company was “like climbing Mount Everest without oxygen”.
“We need more reliable electricity,” Mr Kerkman said.
“It’s not just our business that’s suffered.
“It’s dairy farms up and down the road, crop farms, everybody in this area – they’ve all suffered because there’s just not a reliable energy source here.”
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