ACT Emergency Services Agency Commissioner Georgeina Whelan has defended the response to the January storms which left hundreds of residents in Belconnen without power.
Ms Whelan pointed the finger at Evoenergy for failing to convey the breadth of the problem on January 3, when questioned about the response during an annual reports hearing.
"The advice we were receiving from Evoenergy for about the first 48 hours did not in any way indicate the extent to which there was a power outage," she said.
"In fact, it is not unusual for us to have power outages that are related to storm events."
Ms Whelan said the emergency services agency don't have access to information detailing which members of the community who are most at risk during outages, which was due to privacy laws.
This meant ACT State Emergency Service were unaware which properties that power had been cut from contained residents who depended on medical apparatus.
Ms Whelan said community members who required medical apparatus to support them are registered with Evoenergy.
"They have a responsibility to work with Evoenergy and they put together their plan in the event that they may lose power," she said.
The Commissioner said the storm on the evening of January 3 triggered 1023 request for assistance.
Ms Whelan said the role of the emergency services agency was to respond to requests for assistance through the 132 500 number.
"Which we did," she said.
"We also engaged with other directorates and service providers and brought them into our agency to provide information flow into our incident management team.
"The incident management chain then prioritise its role based on life and property to support our community to respond to those 1023 requests for assistance."
Security Emergency Management Branch manager Bren Burkevics said the Emergencies Act provided the response arrangements to natural hazards, with State Emergency Services the lead agency for storms.
"There are two key sub plans that were used and activated to respond to the storm event of the third of January, one being a storm plan, again under the management of the State Emergency Service, and beyond that the ACT recovery plan, which can kicks in at a very similar timeframe to promote all recovery efforts in a coordinated fashion across the ACT government," Mr Burkevics said.
