Lights out for graduates

Power outage causes chaos across the city

A POWER outage that threatened to leave hundreds of Geelong CBD properties in the dark for hours got resolved within an hour yesterday morning.

Powercor crews were on scene investigating after 535 properties were affected by the blackout Geelong.

It is understood the outage was caused by a pole fire at the intersection of Ryrie and Fenwick streets at about 10.30am, according to a Powercor spokeswoman.

The outage forced the Geelong Magistrates’ Court to be evacuated.

Deakin University’s graduacross central ation ceremony got pushed back by an hour because of the outage.

Hundreds of students from the business and law faculties were left waiting during the power outage, which wreaked havoc at the Waterfront Campus.

“There’s been a power outage currently affecting Building D,” Deakin University posted on Twitter.

“The … 12pm ceremony has been deferred and is anticipated to commence at 1pm.”

Deakin University student Ashleigh Kent told the Geelong Advertiser the blackout made for a chaotic graduation morning.

“It is a bit frustrating, we have just gone to wait in a pub,” she said. “But it’s not Deakin’s fault — obviously there’s just an issue with the power and they are working to fix it. “We will still graduate.” Police swarmed CBD roads to direct traffic along Mercer and Gheringhap streets due to traffic light outages.

Other Geelong-based companies, including the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), also took to social media to alert the community about being offline.

“There has been a power outage at our headquarters in Geelong,” TAC posted on Twitter.

“This means we are unable to take calls at this time.”

The power was restored just before 11.30am.