Residents in Australia’s largest outback town, Kalgoorlie, are facing up to a week without power while sweltering through a major heatwave that has forced the closure of businesses and medical centres.
More than 20,000 homes and businesses began to face blackouts in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, Goldfields and Great Southern regions on Wednesday following severe storms and bushfires, including “most homes and businesses” in Kalgoorlie, according to WA police.
Residents in the remote mining town were urged to prepare for power outages lasting up to a week – which were also affecting the water supply, phone services, internet connection, fuel stations and retail outlets.
On Thursday, Kalgoorlie was all but a ghost town – with Coles and Woolworths the only stores open for tinned food. WA police urged communities to “check on vulnerable neighbours”.
By Friday morning, provider Western Power said it had restored power to about 10,000 homes and businesses in the Goldfields region, adding that it would work to “restore more customers over coming days”. About 1,600 homes in Kalgoorlie are still without power.
Western Power said five 220kVA large transmission towers that supply power on the Merredin-Kalgoorlie line were damaged by the storm, forcing the provider to resort to a backup gas generator.
“Crews are working in challenging circumstances across a large number of hazards to restore power as quickly and safely as possible,” it said.
“If you have power, or when it’s restored, please limit your usage to help maintain supply stability.”
The town was forecast to hit a maximum temperature of 40C on Friday with a high fire danger rating, remaining above 35C until the end of the week.
Western Power has offered a maximum payment of $120 to replace the contents of fridge and freezers for customers without power.
Resident Stephen Blakey described the offer as a “complete joke”.
He said most people would have food in their fridges and freezers worth much more. “How someone hasn’t died from heatstroke is a miracle,” Blakey said.
For some, a quick trip to the town turned into a long stay as shuttered petrol stations prevented travellers from driving home.
Bruna Myers, the owner of a motel for fly-in-fly-out workers, Myers House, said she let one couple stay a night longer for free because they could not get fuel for their car.
“People were virtually stuck,” Myers said. “Fuel stations are going to be very busy. But we get the candles out, we know what to do.”
Tamara Rowsell spent Thursday desperately trying to keep her family’s pet quails safe in 45C heat. Usually, their cages are kept outside an open window so air conditioning passes through.
“I tried to keep them cool with lettuce, little tubs of water and dipping them, but still lost five birds and another three seem iffy,” she said.
“It was so distressing … I did everything I possibly could to help them.”
Outages are common in the outback town, which faced three power losses over the course of 10 days in 2022.
Susan Gambale has been in Kalgoorlie with her husband for just 12 months and already faced two major power outages. Their house blacked out about 5pm on Wednesday and has been sketchy since.
Her husband works in the mines and counted himself lucky for being able to get out of the heat by going to work. But for Gambale – who only has half a thyroid and struggles to regulate her body heat – it was “like being in a sauna and not being able to get out”.
“This time has been absolutely horrendous,” she said. “It didn’t matter which room of the house I was in – I tried all of them – I just couldn’t get cool.
“I work remotely and couldn’t work without internet and very little phone reception, so that’s a lost day of wages for me. We lost all of our food from the fridge and freezer – probably around $600-800 worth – so the $120 really isn’t going to cut it.”
Elijah Tichborne said he did not understand why one of Kalgoorlie’s key backup generators failed.
His family have been stationed in Perth for the week and are planning to return home with a generator and fuel on Friday afternoon.
“We’re always having outages. Back in the day, we had our own power source but now we get it all from Perth,” he said. “It’s a pretty shit system. Usually it’s a situation where it might last a day but this is one of the longer ones.
“The hundred bucks does bugger all – everything’s so expensive. But it just is what it is.”
