Power has been restored to parts of Broken Hill in far-west New South Wales after a major back-up generator failed overnight.
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00:00Nearly 7 hours on from the power outage that occurred overnight, residents in Broken Hill
00:07and surrounding properties are finally starting to have their power be returned to them.
00:13It has had to be done in segments because of fears around overloading the backup generator
00:18that is supporting the town.
00:20And in a statement to the ABC, TransGrid have told us that the reason the backup generator
00:26was taken offline was because they detected a fault and it was a requirement for all safety
00:31concerns to take it offline at 2.30 in the morning.
00:35We did hear from residents outside of Broken Hill but within the far west at areas like
00:40Wilcannia or Menindee that they had their power taken off last night for around two
00:45hours and then it was eventually brought back again.
00:48But as you can see from ongoing reporting today that it really has been quite a tumultuous
00:5324 hours and really last seven days.
00:56Yeah, so Grace how are residents getting on then?
01:00Look, residents here are quite resourceful.
01:05We've seen, I've heard from business owners who said they've been pouring water into bottles
01:10and freezing them to keep their products in the fridge cool overnight if there was to
01:14be an outage.
01:15People are trying to cook dinners on gas barbecues and the such and lots of people are going
01:20out as well to try and purchase generators for themselves and we've also had FPOS machines
01:27go down which requires sort of that need for cash and we did speak with the local credit
01:32union about this.
01:33We'll hear from them now.
01:35I think the main problem that people are having is that despite the digital platforms and
01:39card payments still working, the telecommunications problem has meant that FPOS has been problematic.
01:46So we have had people in here looking for cash so that they could buy generators.
01:50We have had people from Wilcannia come in to get cash so that they can use that in their
01:55communities.
01:56So just being open has been able to solve that problem for them.
02:00So as you can hear, people are really making the best out of a bad situation.
02:05The latest from TransCrude is that their works on the towers that were knocked out over the
02:11last week during that thunderstorm and even possible tornado, the works on that are on
02:16track and they are still hoping to hit that November 6th deadline of having everyone's
02:21power restored by then.