By AIDAN KNIGHT
BUSINESSES and shoppers around Traralgon CBD experienced frustration last week, as several streets lost power for a number of hours.
The Express first arrived at the Franklin Street and Princes Highway intersection on Tuesday, March 31, the first of three sets of traffic lights police were directing simultaneously.
Staff on duty at the nearby Traralgon train station confirmed that police first arrived on scene at 12pm, shortly after receiving the callout, and would continue to do so “until AusNet sorts it out”.
“There looks to be three lots (of outages)”, the spokesperson said, describing a sort of Bermuda triangle. Intersections affected were the corner of Seymour and Franklin streets, Franklin St and Princes Highway, and Seymour St and Princes Hwy.
Meanwhile, Augustus Gelato was doing a decent trade, capitalising on the onlookers, curiously interested in the police presence, as one of the only stores not to lose power along that strip, with even the Grand Junction Hotel having completely shut up shop.
BCF Traralgon, further along the highway, received power earlier than the three listed areas. Staff confirmed with the Express that they did indeed lose power. Their competitors, Aussie Disposals Traralgon, located more centrally to the town, said the disruption came at the worst possible time.
“We weren’t able to serve customers (not paying with cash) – heaps of them – in our second biggest week of the year, everyone’s coming in for camping gear ahead of Easter,” store manager Steve Asmussen said.
“AusNet told us 1.20pm it’d be restored,” he said as the clock ticked over to 1.28pm.
With no sign of AusNet responders outside the store, police officers continued to sweat it out in the sun.
AusNet later changed the reconnection time on its website to 2.35pm. This was delayed further, with it still not completed an hour later.
Across the road from Aussie Disposals, Panthers Menswear was relatively unaffected.
Store team member Carol said the traffic lights went haywire before they went out, as she was driving to work.
“They were just flashing orange, the circle and the arrow, and as I looked in my rear mirror, I could see they (the opposite side) actually had a red light, but ours just kept flashing, so nobody was sure whether to keep driving or not, we were like ‘what the hell was that?”.”
“The girls in here said the (store) lights flashed at that time too, at quarter to 12.”
Traralgon’s Bank Australia was left affected the next day, with staff having to work from the Moe office after the previous day’s fiasco impacted the businesses switchboard, indicating a possible surge.
The Express contacted AusNet for comment, but received no reply.
