Crookwell business premises lose trade from power, phone outage

Numerous businesses were forced to close on Sunday and into Monday as providers scurried to repair networks.

The blackout has infuriated at least one business owner, Floyd Davies, who said a better power supply solution was needed for the town.

An Essential Energy spokeswoman said 3,373 customers in Crookwell were without power for just over 24 hours, as two major transmission poles were damaged from strong winds.

READ MORE: Severe storm cuts electricity to Goulburn district homes

"Crews worked to replace the damaged power poles on St Stephens Road and restored power to all customers by 2am Monday," she said.

A severe storm on Saturday night cut power to more than 29,800 customers in the South East region, including Goulburn Crookwell and district, Yass Moruya, Jindabyne, Braidwood, Verona, Cooma and surrounding areas.

At the same time, telephone and internet reception was also cut. It meant business could not use Eftpos facilities or use the town's Commonwealth Bank ATM.

Crookwell IGA co-owner Floyd Davies said while the outage was no-one's fault, he was "furious" about the impact.

"I understand there is only one (electricity) feed into Crookwell and when one thing goes wrong, the whole town suffers," he said.

"It's hard to understand how one blackout can cause such chaos."

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Mr Davies said it was the third outage in three years and it was very difficult to secure insurance for the losses. In those two blackouts he sustained $70,000 and $60,000 losses respectively. He had not tallied losses from this outage but said it would be slightly less.

An alarm alerted him to the power loss at 12.30am Saturday. While he deployed generators from Goulburn and saved some of the perishables, a great deal had to be thrown out. The generators enabled the business to re-open for Sunday morning only but there was no Eftpos, which usually constituted 90 per cent of business.

"It's been a massive job to get the power restored. I'll be taking this up and encouraging the council and Essential Energy to find a better solution so blackouts don't stop business in the whole town...It would not happen in Goulburn," Mr Davies said.

He told The Post it could easily happen again, given the forecast summer weather.

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While Essential Energy stated that power was restored to premises by mid morning, Mr Davies said outlying residents had told him they were still without electricity.

Crookwell Newsagency manager Maria Cartwright said the business was among those that didn't open on Sunday.

"It's very bad this close to Christmas," she said.

The newsagency re-opened at about 11am Monday.

A Paul's Cafe spokeswoman said the eatery could not open on Sunday, resulting in a "big day" of re- organisation.

At Crookwell RSL Services Club, manager April Gay said the power went out after the facility closed for the evening.

"Because of this, the club was unable to trade on Sunday resulting in the cancellation of our kids Christmas party which we had 80 kids booked in. We also had to cancel our bowling club's annual major prize giveaway. To make matters worse, we have experienced issues with phone service and internet until early this morning."

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Council operations were also affected in Crookwell and Gunning. At 12.30pm Monday, 32 customers at Gunning remained without power.

An Essential Energy spokeswoman said at the storm's peak, 14,000 customers in the Yass area were impacted by outages.

"Crews worked throughout the night in challenging conditions to restore power to majority of these customers by late Saturday evening," she said.

Telstra regional general manager Chris Taylor said the provider was making progress to restore network sites across the state.

"But we still have some mobile, home phone and internet services impacted by power outages following the weekend's severe storms," he said.

"The majority of services in Crookwell were restored earlier on Monday.

"Our technicians are on the road, installing back-up generators where it's safe to do so and we're working with local power authorities so we can get everyone back online as quickly as possible."

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