Storms blamed for Drouin blackouts

That is little comfort to affected residents, many of whom regard that as an easy excuse given they claim there have been a dozen or more occasions over the past year when there have had prolonged periods without electricity.

The latest lengthy outages mainly affected some residential areas on the northern side of Drouin.

Residents of one estate have their own Facebook page – Residents of Jackson’s View – to discuss matters of common interest and the electricity outages have been getting plenty of mentions.

Planned disruptions to supply, of which people are notified in advance, are annoying for residents but generally accepted.

It is the sudden and frequent loss of electricity without warning that is making them angry.

During the past year they claim there have been instances where they have been without power for as long as eight hours.

One resident wrote that outages occurred whether it was hot, windy or wet; another said the prices for electricity and the standard of service was “Third World”; one said there was no compensation available for refrigerated food that perishes, and another said the problems were nothing new, “they’ve been happening for 30 years”.

Other comments on the Jackson’s View residents’ Facebook page included “something is seriously wrong”, “class action time, enough is enough”, and “bloody ridiculous”.

A resident in Lyndhurst Square, an estate that adjoins Jackson’s View, said that in the past 12 months they have had 13 unplanned outages with the longest being more than seven hours early last year.

He said the major problems seemed to relate to the northern side of the town and also affected Drouin West, Buln Buln, and parts of Warragul.

The number of houses in that area were about 2000, he said.

“Why does the north side of Drouin always cop blackouts?”

Houses only a couple of metres to the south of where we live do not lose power, the resident stated.

He said no explanation was given by AusNet to residents’ inquiries, he claimed.

It was alleged that one complaint to AusNet received a response that “if you are eligible for Guaranteed Service Level compensation (more than 12 sustained outages in a year) this will be paid to the retailer in March of this year”.

The complainant advised everybody to check their bills thoroughly in March and April.

An AusNet spokesperson said the January 31 and February 1 outages were definitely due to nearby storm activity and more than 38,000 of its customers across the state were without electricity for periods for that reason.

The spokesperson pointed out that Drouin’s electricity supply was provided via three feeder lines from the main transmission network and explained why some areas in the town lost power and others didn’t.

However, inquiries by The Gazette over the past fortnight seeking possible reasons for the regular outages over many years have not yet received answers.

A blue SUV with stolen registration plates was destroyed by fire in Longwarry last Monday night.

Police said they had received several reports of a blue SUV driving erratically in the Ripplebrook area before 6.30pm.

A short time later police discovered the vehicle, with stolen registration plates, engulfed in fire on Gardner Rd, Longwarry.