WESTERN Power has encouraged customers who experience an outage for longer than 12 consecutive hours from last Wednesday’s Perth Hills storm to apply for an extended outage payment.
Power outages were still affecting residents into last weekend in Mount Helena, Stoneville, Chidlow, Sawyers Valley and Gidgegannup and surrounds, with emergency response crews continuing to work to address a number of hazards and outages caused by the storm.
More than 130 hazards were reported in the Perth Hills, with 55 hazards identified in Mt Helena, 26 of which were hazards on the ground.
As of Friday morning last week, there were still around 3,340 customers without power, down from around 5,000 on Thursday afternoon and 12,200 at the peak.
By Wednesday afternoon this week there were still four residents without power down from 320 on Sunday.
A Western Power spokesperson said they understood the inconvenience and frustration the outages have caused residents and have been communicating with customers directly impacted via SMS.
The damaging and destructive winds associated with the storm front threw debris, including tree branches, into the network damaging equipment and bringing down powerlines including three feeder lines in Sawyers Valley and one in Darlington.
Residents can claim a $120 service standard payment for outages lasting 12 or more hours as an acknowledgement of the inconvenience for customers who have experienced a long supply interruption while waiting for repairs to be completed and restoration of power to occur.
Payment of successful claims will be made to nominated account within 30 days.
Claims can be made at www.westernpower.com.au/issues-enquiries/make-a-claim/extended-outage/