Thousands of homes without power after damaging winds

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Strong winds have caused power outages to homes and businesses in New South Wales and disruption  at Sydney Airport.

Transcript

00:00 Parts of Sydney's west and southwest were the hardest hit by this wild weather overnight,

00:06 with these strong winds causing significant damage across that part of the city.

00:12 And here at Sydney Airport today, there has been ongoing disruption with dozens of flights

00:17 inbound and outbound of the domestic airport cancelled and also passengers facing delays.

00:24 And Air Services Australia says the airport may have to operate today with just a single

00:29 runway.

00:30 And in terms of the damage that was caused overnight, to give you an idea of how strong

00:34 the winds were, they reached up to 104km/h at Badgerys Creek around 3am.

00:41 And with that at Brinjeli, part of a roof of a shopping village was blown away, while

00:46 at St Clair the roof of a carport was blown into a neighbouring property.

00:51 So the SES received more than 200 calls for help and today SES crews are continuing to

00:58 clean up the damage of fallen trees, fallen power lines and also scaffolding being knocked

01:05 down.

01:06 In Leppington, a neighbour's pergola flew into Angela Cavanino's backyard.

01:12 This is what she had to say.

01:14 Probably about 3 o'clock we woke up.

01:16 It was quite windy last night so we heard quite a loud crash in the middle of the night.

01:21 And of course we sort of just went back to sleep.

01:23 We didn't really think anything much of it.

01:25 And of course again when I've woken up this morning, I've opened up the blinds and there's

01:30 a huge pergola in our backyard.

01:32 So what it looks like is that it's come over from one of our back neighbours over the fence.

01:36 It's hit our roof, it's damaged our roof tiles and also managed to lodge itself around the

01:42 Foxtel antenna as well.

01:44 There's also a major power outage across Sydney at the moment with 19,000 Endeavour Energy

01:50 customers right now without power.

01:53 And those customers are being warned that the power could be down until at least the

01:56 late afternoon with that company saying that the issue of restoring power is being made

02:03 more difficult by the total fire ban in place today in Greater Sydney which means that crews

02:08 have to work more carefully to make sure they don't inadvertently spark any fires.

02:13 And Alison, what is the fire situation for the state today?

02:18 Well Ros, three fires have been upgraded this morning to watch and act level.

02:23 Those are all in the Tenterfield region.

02:25 So one fire at Tabulum, one at Woodside and another at the Donnybrook State Forest have

02:31 all been upgraded to watch and act level.

02:33 So residents are being told to prepare their properties now and if they are not prepared

02:38 they should leave as soon as possible.

02:41 And today total fire bans are in place across seven regions around New South Wales.

02:47 That's more than 80% of the state.

02:49 So those regions are Greater Sydney, the Greater Hunter, Illawarra Shoal Haven, the Central

02:54 Ranges, New England, North Western and Northern Slopes districts.

02:59 And hot and windy weather is forecast for much of the state and at the moment the Rural

03:04 Fire Service is battling about 80 blazes across the state with about 30 yet to be contained.

03:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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