After an extended power outage over the weekend, Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mayor John Bowler has called for an independent probe into how Western Power is managing its back-up electricity supply in Australia’s largest desert city.
Last Sunday, temperatures in WA’s Goldfields, Midwest, and Wheatbelt areas reached 40 degrees Celsius, affecting more than 20,000 customers.
A blaze near Narrogin disrupted Western Power’s transmission lines, and it required time to turn on gas turbines in West Kalgoorlie.
In some circumstances, the interruption extended up to six hours. At a podium, a man in a suit and tie speaks into a microphone.
The mayor of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, John Bowler, called the outage “awful.” (Jarrod Lucas, ABC Goldfields)
Mr Bowler, a former state legislator and Labor minister in the Carpenter administration, called the situation “awful.”
He claimed it was the third extended outage he’d seen since taking office in 2015.