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Winds cause more Victorian blackouts

The SES has received more than 200 calls for assistance as wild winds batter Victoria, causing blackouts once again.

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Source: AAP


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More wild winds have caused blackouts in Melbourne's outer east just as power had been restored to homes after last week's storms.

Winds of more than 80 km/h have battered the city, with about 1250 homes without power at 9.30pm on Saturday.

Warburton and Gembrook were the areas worst affected.

Power company AusNet said it expected most customers to be reconnected by Sunday but if winds persisted, blackouts might increase.

"The weather's not good, there's every chance it will go up overnight, hopefully not by much but we'll try and connect as many in the morning," AusNet spokesman Andrew Dyllon said.

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Line staff would be boosted to help reconnect customers as quickly as possible, the company said.

Almost 130,000 homes lost power last week from strong winds.

Reconnections took days because numerous smaller faults were discovered as big areas of the network were restored.

AusNet said almost all customers hit by the power outages last week had been reconnected by Saturday morning but a few new cases came to light as people visited their holiday homes.

From midnight Friday the SES had received 239 calls for assistance, mostly for felled trees and building damage.

A number of calls were from residents affected by the storms last week.

"Some of those jobs were people calling in to resecure temporary repairs we had done last week," an SES spokeswoman said.

A severe weather warning is in place for Melbourne's metro, the state's southwest and central area.


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