Thousands of WA homes without power after rainfall sparks dozens of pole-top fires

Thousands of homes are still waiting for power after a sprinkle of rain sparked dozens of pole-top fires across the State.

Western Power is desperately working to restore power in about 16,700 homes in the Perth Metropolitan, Wheatbelt and Mid West regions as it juggles 139 active outages.

Some homes — including those living in Forrestania, about 430km east of Perth — have been waiting since about 1.30pm on Friday.

As many as 38,000 homes were without power on Saturday morning.

The majority of customers impacted are in the suburbs of Midland, Moora, Myaree, Balga and Bullsbrook.

Western Power asset operations executive Zane Christmas said pole-top fires often occurred during light rain when “a combination of dust and pollution builds up to create paths of ‘tracks’ on the insulators”.

“This tracking electricity can heat poles to a point where they smoulder and burn,” he said.

Thousands of Perth homes — including in Willagee, Hamilton Hill, Scarborough and Balga — have been hit with the power blackout.

Residents living in rural communities — including Daadenning Creek, Binnu, Wedgecarrup and Balingup — are also still without power.

The outages were first reported about 6.15am on Saturday.

A Western Power spokesperson said the power outages could last for an “extended period”.

“This is due to the number of faults across the network and the time required to replace damaged assets, with pole replacements in some instances taking up to eight hours,” the spokesperson said.

“We will continue to communicate with affected customers via SMS.”

Mr Christmas said Western Power would prioritise high-risk regions.

“We give priority to areas of increased risk such as those in extreme and high bushfire risk regions,” he said.

Residents in parts of Mount Barker and Narrikup in the Shire of Plantagenet have been told to stay alert after a bushfire started about 1pm on Friday, destroying 240ha of land.

The bushfire is contained and controlled, with firefighters on the scene mopping up.

The restoration time for Narrikup is currently “unknown”, according Western Power’s outage tracker online.

“An unknown restoration time message can arise when there is extensive damage to the network, generally caused by a major incident such as a storm, and our crews are attending to many faults,” the Western Power website says.

“In such cases, our crews must firstly make each site safe before work can commence.”