By Allister Hayman
PEAKhour commuters had a dark and eerie experience on Monday evening after galeforce winds caused a power blackout on the Princes Highway.
Drivers were forced to feel their way through the dark between Officer and Pakenham as police were called out to direct the traffic at major intersections and train crossings.
A spokesperson for SPAusNet, which operates the power grid, said high winds had caused a tree to fall onto power lines in Tivendale Road, Officer, at 5.30pm.
Crews worked on the line and full power was restored to the area by 6.42pm.
Several businesses were without power for more than an hour, including service stations on both sides of the Princes Highway.
Colin Mcleod, a spokesperson for Mobil Officer, said the power outage couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“Early evening is peak time, especially on the outbound side of Princes Highway,” he said.
“We’re all on computers so without power we’re completely out of business. You can’t just drag petrol out of the ground.”
Signal failures on the Pakenham train line next to the terminus station caused the cancellation of two trains.
Passengers were forced to wait on board a train for up to 45 minutes within sight of Pakenham station, where many commuters, including this reporter, waited in frustration as Connex employees struggled to rectify the problem.
Drivers were also forced to wait up to half an hour at the Racecourse Road and Bald Hill Roads boom gates before police were called to direct the traffic.
Police said they were alarmed to find some drivers attempting to go around the boom gates.
“That is an extremely dangerous thing to do,” Senior Sergeant Chris Marlow said.
While the blackout caused inconvenience to the public, police reported no major incidents.
“The problems were rectified fairly quickly, which was a relief,” Sen Sgt Marlow said.
Neither Connex nor SPAusNet could confirm if the power outage was the cause of the signal failures on the Pakenham line.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) expected the winds which were to blame for the outage to ease by Thursday after reporting strong to galeforce winds of up to 100km/h per hour across Melbourne’s east on Monday.
“We’ve had a pretty still winter so far so this windy episode has caught a few people by surprise,” a BoM forecaster said.