By Callum Godde and William Ton, AAP
Victoria’s devastating storms have shone a spotlight on the need for more backup power to telecommunication towers, Premier Jacinta Allan says.
About 33,000 homes and premises across the state were still disconnected from the electricity network as of Friday morning, Ms Allan confirmed.
Authorities expect most will be reconnected by 6pm on Saturday, while a further 3000 likely won’t have power restored until early next week.
The storms led to one of the biggest power outages in Victoria’s history, with 530,000 properties off the grid at one point.
Collapsed transmission lines caused the Loy Yang A coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley to shut down, but authorities insist the widespread outages were caused by local transmission damage.
Ms Allan didn’t completely dismiss the idea of moving power lines underground but stressed the resilience of the above-ground network needed to be strengthened.
“You can’t have a uniform approach,” she told ABC Radio Melbourne.
About 230 phone towers were still offline on Thursday as Telstra, Optus and TPG crews raced to reconnect services.
The government said some residents may be unable to make triple-zero calls after Telstra warned up to 22 communities were potentially without any form of telecommunications.
Ms Allan said it was reasonable to question if telcos should have more batteries and generators around towers as backup power sources for severe weather events.
“We saw the same thing coming out of Queensland with the cyclone event before Christmas,” the premier said.
“The reality is everyone relies on their mobile phone. Very few people have a landline.
“This has really emerged strongly out of this event this week as something that needs much greater focus and attention at both levels of government, but also the telecommunications companies have to come to the table with solutions.”
Government Services Minister Gabrielle Williams met with telcos on Thursday and will do so again on Friday.
The Herald Sun reported leaked internal documents show emergency callers at one point on Tuesday were forced to wait more than a minute for fire services to answer, up to six minutes for police and 23 minutes for the State Emergency Service.
But Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes declared the numbers were not accurate, suggesting they were predictive rather than what eventuated.
“What the data shows is no one waited more than around three minutes for police calls,” she told Melbourne radio station 3AW.
“In relation to the SES line, that was receiving enormous amounts of calls but that’s a non-emergency line.”
Ms Allan suggested the state’s emergency call-taking service, Triple Zero Victoria, also came under strain despite extra staff being added in anticipation of the catastrophic weather.
“Tuesday was the highest number … for police calls ever,” she said.
“It was the fourth highest ever for the emergency service and I think that speaks to … the tornado-like winds.”
NBN services were also impacted by the storms across more than 100 suburbs, with significant damage to infrastructure in Belgrave, Berwick South, Emerald, Lakes Entrance, Leongatha and Mirboo North.
A relief point has been set up in Mirboo North to provide information, electricity generators and satellite internet for residents after the town was completely cut off by the storm damage.
