Letter to the Editor
It seems that the exaggerated cyclone Kirrily has enabled the the restoration of supply by Ergon to be drawn out to serve a state government agenda.
This tropical low peaked at around 90kmh at 992 hPa when it crossed the coast here. The resulting electricity outages were beyond belief. Whole areas such as a large part of Annadale were knocked out along with most of tsv and surrounds. These areas have underground services and the 11kV distribution was undamaged. Strange.
Driving to work showed little damage. Shallow rooted trees blown over a bit of a rarity. A few branches and twigs lying around being the main evidence of a bit of a puff. Very rare to see any powerline damage.
Apparently Ergon stood their guys down for 12 hours. No wind, no reason and a large fleet of service trucks parked up.
Anyway I thought you may like a head’s up on what is happening (or not as the case may be) here.
Kind regards
Pete Quaresmini, Townsville
Editor: Queensland Labor wasted millions deploying just about every state government agency to the Townsville district for a tropical low that by usual cyclone severity rated quite low. As usual the Bureau of Meteorology based in Canberra had plenty of repetition while being egged on by ABC bulletins every 10 minutes.
Cairns News heard much of the radio beat ups by the ABC and the usual Brisbane hyper-media which in reality amounted to little damage by a tropical low in comparison to the usual real cyclones the north is accustomed to.