Authorities say a network trip left around 24,000 Midwest homes and businesses without power in what is being described as the region's worst outage since Cyclone Seroja.
Residents in Geraldton and surrounding areas woke to confusion, bad instant coffee, and traffic chaos following this morning's blackout.
Customers lost power just before 5am, with the cause of the outage a mystery until about 11:30am.
By that time, Western Power had restored power to most of those affected north of Three Springs, Dongara and Northampton, and Geraldton.
A spokesman for the utility said a protection device had tripped on the transmission network, causing the blackout.
"Backup generators supporting the area experienced a separate fault," he said.
"Crews are investigating the cause of the generator fault. Western Power crews worked to re-energise Geraldton and surrounds via separate feeder lines."
Court delayed, medical appointments cancelled
The power plunge forced the Geraldton Magistrates Court to delay proceedings, other businesses did not open, and medical and childcare services were affected.
Midwest Chamber of Commerce CEO Jo Fabling said the ongoing outages should be a wakeup call to for the WA government.
"It's absolutely frustrating and not only that, it's costly. It's costing people their livelihoods, we need certainty in power," she said.
"This morning was another example of the frailty of our infrastructure."
Ms Fabling said it felt like the Midwest was at the behest of the network.
"It felt like we were straight back to the times of [Cyclone] Seroja actually," she said.
Geraldton Mayor Shane Van Styn said the outage was the most significant since 2021.
"Since [Cyclone] Seroja this is definitely the largest outage our area has seen," he said.
"People were very distressed that it might be out for some time because at that point [in the late morning] no one knew when it was going to be rectified.
"A lot of businesses had to choose between trying to open for day not knowing the restoration was going to occur, so a lot of them chose to close."
Telstra general regional manager Boyd Brown said telecommunications were disrupted during the outage.
"While all Telstra mobile base stations have battery back up in place … after a few hours without mains power some sites will begin to fail," he said.
Protecting the vulnerable
Mullewa GP and head of the local pharmacy Nalini Rao kept practice doors open on Tuesday despite having no internet or phones for several hours.
She said outages have plagued the Midwest town for years.
"Sometimes it feels like I'm living in a third world country, to be honest," Dr Rao said.
"I'm grateful for the blessings we do have but this power issue is a great inconvenience to the patients and it's a loss to my business, too, because I've still got to pay my staff."
She said the centre was only open for one day last week due to power outages and other disruptions.
"People couldn't get their medication and I couldn't see patients," Dr Rao said.
"We normally see between 20 and 30 patients a day, and we know that the wait time to get into Geraldton [doctors] is nearly two weeks."
