An aged care home in the Adelaide Hills remains without mains power supply five days after storms caused significant damage across South Australia, prompting concerns and criticism over the facility's response.
State member for Heysen Josh Teague said residents at the Estia nursing home at Aldgate who rely on electric beds had been forced to sleep in chairs, and that a generator was only powering part of the facility.
The home has said a generator had been on site "at all times", but confirmed mains power had been lost on the weekend.
Mr Teague said everyone was doing their best to fix the issue, but it was a challenging time for the residents.
"This really is very pressing," Mr Teague told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"The residents have special beds that obviously rely on electric power and some residents, I'm told, have been forced to be sleeping in chairs while the power is not available to the beds.
"We really are anxious to see that power is restored as a matter of urgent priority."
But a spokesperson for Estia Health Aldgate has disputed that residents are sleeping in chairs.
"Since mains power was lost, the home has been using a mobile generator to adjust beds to meet residents' needs, when required. So, the electric-powered beds can, and are, being used," the spokesperson said.
A makeshift sign at the facility's entrance states there is "no power" and advises visitors to enter through a side gate.
The spokesperson confirmed the "home lost mains power when the storm went through on the weekend".
"The home has a backup generator on site at all times and it was activated once mains power went down. A second backup generator has been brought in," the spokesperson said.
"Our residents have access to hot water, hot meals, mobile phone charging, supplementary oxygen, electric bed adjustments etc as per normal. Back-up lighting is in all rooms including bathrooms."
But Janene Overton, whose 89-year-old mother Maureen Parsons is a resident of the aged care home, said that hot water had only been restored in the past few days.
"They're starting to have hot water, they went a few days without hot water to shower," she said.
She said while staff had been "wonderful", the overall response had been unsatisfactory, and that generators were not enough.
"Especially for my mum, she's on oxygen, it means there's no way she can use any of the oxygen machines, so what they're using now is huge tanks," she said.
"Those tanks can only last so long."
Problem should have been fixed 'much, much earlier'
Ms Overton said she hoped power would be restored soon, and that it would "be very difficult" for her mum "if it lasts too much longer".
"She's also got bad circulation so she's freezing," she said.
"She has to sit up all the time, because they can't make the beds move up and down.
"The staff are fantastic, they are just wonderful … but really this is a very difficult situation someone should have looked at much, much earlier.
"I don't know if they're moving them around because they have to bring the food in … there's no television, there's no amusements."
Hema Patankar said staff had been "wonderful" and were taking "amazing care" of her 98-year-old mother Betty.
But she was surprised it had taken so long to reconnect supply.
"There's a little bit of lighting in the corridor but no heating," she said.
"The staff definitely have a difficult situation, one would hope they're would be more priority for an aged care home.
"I've been surprised it's been four [to] five days now. Until yesterday, they didn't have hot water for showers."
Power was cut to 163,000 homes and businesses across South Australia amid destructive weather on Saturday that also knocked out the interconnector with Victoria, isolating SA from the national grid.
Five days later, most of those properties have had electricity restored — but more than 2,000 are still without power.
SA Power Networks spokesman Paul Roberts said power should be restored to the nursing home by 4pm today.
"This aged care centre was affected by an outage caused by damage to both high and low voltage lines that supply the home and other customers in the area, and which are being repaired today," he said.
"Given the volume of requests we receive, we will escalate restoration for critical infrastructure and emergency situations but we simply can't prioritise everyone who wants to be prioritised amidst such a massive event where 163,000 residential, business and other facilities are affected.
"We continue to encourage facilities such as aged care homes to assess their specific circumstances and have back up plans in place for extended outages."
One caller to ABC Radio Adelaide said he had received a text advising him power to his property at neighbouring Stirling would not be restored "until 3pm on Sunday".
"We've been out since four o'clockish last Saturday so it's eight days we'll be out, and there's not a lot of Armageddon on our street," he said.
"There is some damage but … all the poles are standing."
Mr Roberts said that, despite initially ruling out the possibility, "there will actually be some people" still without power on the weekend — and that another possible storm on Saturday could present an additional challenge.
"There is some bad weather coming and we will have to respond," he said.
But Telstra services cut in the north of the state because of the storms have now been restored, SA Police has said.
"There are no longer any communities in isolation and all community members are able to contact emergency services on triple zero," police said.
