Weather News

Lights out at Wilcannia and White Cliffs

Around 600 households around Wilcannia and White Cliffs are still without power this morning, after an outage somewhere near Menindee.

Essential Energy said the power was cut yesterday afternoon - but it has not been able to find the source.

The power company will do an aerial search this morning to try to find the problem, and fresh crews will be sent out at first light.

Essential Energy's regional general manager, Guy Chick, said the wet weather has hampered efforts to fix the problem.

"We've got an outage on the main feeder north of Menindee," he said.

"Unfortunately we haven't been able to find the problem because of the wet ground conditions.

"We've had crews from Broken Hill, Menindee and Wilcannia working from both townships, Menindee and Wilcannia, trying to find the fault, but one crew has been stranded."

More crews were heading out this morning, including an aerial crew, to look for the source of the problem.

But Mr Chick said it will be a while before power will be restored.

"It's well and good the aerial may find it, but then we've got to be able to get access to it, and there's been a fair bit of rain in that area," he said.

"The power cannot go on until we actually find the fault and get access to the fault."


- ABC

© ABC 2012

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