Homes in Australia’s largest desert city without power due to balloons

The electricity in Australia’s largest desert city has been knocked out for some residents by balloons. The power was out for 76 homes for less than 90 minutes, but comes as Kalgoorlie swelters through repeated, much wider blackouts. Last month the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mayor warned it was a matter of time before someone died because of the outages in the desert city, 600kms east of Perth. South Kalgoorlie This latest outage happened about 3.15pm on Tuesday, though temperatures in the desert city at the time were only in the low-20s. Images of four blue balloons snagged on the power lines in South Kalgoorlie surfaced on social media. Four streets in the suburb lost power, affecting 76 homes. Western Power had initially estimated it could take five hours to restore power, but the electricity was back up and running in less than 90 minutes. In August 16,000 homes and businesses were without power for up to seven hours. The Mayor told the Kalgoorlie Miner residents were frustrated and losing trust in the reliability of basic infrastructure. It was only a matter of time before somebody died because of the instability of the power network, Mayor Glenn Wilson said. In January, thousands of connections were cut across the Goldfields, Wheatbelt and Perth Hills while the temperature hit 40 degrees, as a supercell thunderstorm smashed critical transmission infrastructure. Some people in Kalgoorlie were without electricity for days. In March about 15,000 homes and businesses in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Coolgardie, Southern Cross and the surrounding areas were left without power and air conditioning for a couple of hours in the evening. A transient fault caused a 220kV line to trip.