Metallic helium balloons may have been the cause of a power cut that took out thousands of homes across Sunbury last weekend.
Almost 5,000 homes lost power at around 5.20pm Saturday, 11 October, after balloons were found to have shorted out high-voltage cables in Jackson St.
A spokesperson for power company Jemena said: “There were actually two separate outages that evening in Sunbury.
“The first one occurred at about five o’clock in the afternoon, when balloons – and we’re not saying for certain they came from the Sunbury Show – but there were some helium balloons that got caught up in high-voltage wires.
“As a result, 4,700 homes were disconnected so repair work could be completed.”
While most homes had power restored within minutes as network operators switched to an alternative supply, that too was disrupted – this time by a possum.
“There was a portion of customers that were switched onto a different part of the network and were restored quite quickly,” the spokesperson said.
“But then, as Murphy’s Law would have it, later that evening a possum managed to get itself caught up in the wires at about 8.30pm. That saw 1,700 customers without power.
“So there were actually two separate power outages, one due to the balloons, one due to a possum.
“I’ve worked in energy for a long time and haven’t seen balloons and possums causing disruptions to the same area at the same time. So that was just really unfortunate that it happened.”
