Almost 3500 Perth households are sweltering through today’s scorching 39C day after losing power due to unplanned outages.
Almost 2000 Hills homes have been without power since this morning, down from about 2700 initially.
Crews are working to restore power to people in Kalamunda, Forrestfield, Maida Vale, Lesmurdie, Stirling, Alexander Heights and Gooseberry Hill by 7pm.
A Western Power spokesman said crews were working to find the fault but repair works were complicated given the hot weather and risk of fire.
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READ NOW“The outage is in a zone that has fire weather day restrictions in place which means our operating procedures have changed for today to meet the cross-agency commitment to reduce the risk of bushfire during summer,” he said.
“We will still be able to repair any damage that we find and proceed to be ready for restoring power but unless we identify the exact cause of the outage we can’t attempt an automatic restoration.
“The total restoration of power will now depend on when the fire index falls to a safe level which at this stage, according to advice from DFES and the Bureau of Meteorology will not be until later this evening.
“We are very sorry for the inconvenience and frustration that this unplanned outage is causing to people on such a hot day.”
A further 1170 homes are without power in Cannington, Beckenham and East Cannington after an unplanned outage. Western Power estimates their services will return about 4pm today.
And about 350 homes are offline in Rossmoyne and Shelley. They are expected to have power restored about 6pm today.
In Mandurah, more than 100 customers were without power for a couple of hours. Their power was restored about 1.30pm, ahead of the 3pm estimated time.