Thousands of homes around Perth still without power after wild weather causes chaos

Staff writersThe West Australian
VideoPerth has been hit by hundreds of lightning strikes as an afternoon storm rolled in from the north - just after school pickup - but just as work finished.

Thousands of homes around Perth remain without power this morning after widespread outages were sparked by wild weather in the capital last night.

Hail, heavy rains and lightning caused chaos on Tuesday evening with roofs blown off homes, trees thrown on to roads and in some cases powerlines brought down by strong winds.

At the peak of the outages as many as 18,000 homes were left without power with the most impacted areas being North Beach, Trigg, Karrinyup, Balga, Hamersley, Balcatta, Yokine, Menora, Coolbinia, Nollamara, Tuart Hill, Osborne Park, Stirling, and Inglewood.

Camera IconTree on fire in Melville. Credit: Facebook / Robbie McClafferty/Facebook / Robbie McClafferty

And while many have had power restored, there are still more than 2000 homes around the Metro area in blackout.

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Wanneroo and Nollamara are the most badly affected this morning with more than 400 homes in each suburb still without power with no known estimated time of restoration.

It’s a similar situation in Balcatta, Yokine, North Perth, Balga, Greenwood, Warwick, Kelmscott and Westminster while there are also outages in Bayswater and Trigg.

Western Power said yesterday that they had mobilised additional crew to deal with hazard reports and has reminded residents to steer clear of damaged powerlines.

Several people had to be rescued last night after roads were flooded when the severe storm battered the Perth metropolitan area .

The severe weather brought spectacular lightning strikes and damaging winds to Perth from about 4.45pm onwards just as thousands of people began their journey home from work.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued the severe weather warning for dozens of Perth suburbs from Joondalup in the north to Rockingham in the south.

The rain and wind caused several trees to fall onto cars, leaving people trapped.

There were at least two reports last night, one in Wembley, the other in Belmont. The extent of the injuries to the people caught up the drama is yet to be revealed.

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