Just 10 days after Cyclone Marcia spread through the Capricorn Coast and the Rockhampton region, Ergon Energy restored power to metro and remote areas, with all customers on supply either by network or generation support.
Ergon crews moved around affected areas en masse, reconnecting premises that had structural damage repaired by contractors, and attending to more than 2300 power lines in the network that were brought down by cyclonic winds.
The corporation’s restoration team grew to 1000 field staff from across regional Queensland during the clean up effort, with Energex crews also working out of two staging posts in Yeppoon.
Incident response manager Steve Leighton said 30km of damaged network was required in Byfield alone – a small town north of Yeppoon. While the electricity was being reconnected, the Byfield community – along with customers in Marlborough through to Clairview – were supplied by one of Ergon’s high voltage Pegasus network injection units.
“Considering where we were after Marcia cut her destructive path through the region knocking out power to more than 65,000 customers, it is a great position to be in and to have played such a vital role in getting the community back on its feet and back to normality,” incident response manager Steve Leighton said.
“Full credit for this result must go to the many hundreds of workers from across the state who arrived to help the most heavily impacted centres. A truly amazing job in pretty arduous conditions, an effort not lost on the surrounding communities who were very thankful.”
