source : the age
Three young children had to be rushed to hospital after powerful winds lifted a jumping castle into the air in Sydney’s inner south as wild weather cut power to thousands of homes across Sydney, Newcastle and the Central Coast.
An Ausgrid spokeswoman said crews were still working to restore power to approximately 1400 homes as of 7am on Sunday morning with services expected to be restored by midday.
The outages followed a cool change that swept through NSW, with wind gusts surpassing 80km/h recorded at Sydney Airport late on Saturday afternoon. Temperatures in Sydney had hovered around 30 degrees, accompanied by strong north-westerly winds.
At the height of the outages, about 40,000 Ausgrid customers were left without power after high winds damaged one of the company’s substations in Sydney’s west. Another 50,000 customers on Endeavour Energy’s network were also left without power.
Emergency services were called to Gardiner Park in Banksia, about 12 kilometres south of the CBD, about 1.20pm on Saturday after the jumping castle became airborne, a NSW Ambulance spokeswoman said. The children were taken to Sydney Children’s Hospital after being treated by paramedics at the scene.
A preschool-aged boy and girl suffered head injuries, while a baby was treated for minor injuries. A woman was also taken to hospital with minor injuries, the spokeswoman said. All three children were in a stable condition.
This was the second incident involving an airborne jumping castle recorded in a matter of hours on Saturday. Two children were injured at a party near Geelong in Victoria in the morning. Both children were taken to hospital with injuries to their upper bodies and were in a stable condition.
Greater Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains were the areas worst hit by the wild winds.
“There’s currently over 250 fault sites. Crews are currently working to make damaged areas safe before restoration work can commence,” an Endeavour Energy spokeswoman said. The company’s website estimated that power would not be restored until the early hours of Sunday morning.
In a statement, an Ausgrid spokeswoman said most customers were expected to have their power restored by 7pm with the remainder by 11pm.
“There are currently approximately 40,000 customers without power after strong winds moved through Sydney and the Central Coast this afternoon,” she said.
“Hardest-hit areas include Bankstown, Milperra and Revesby where high winds have caused some damage to one of our substations.”
Outages were being experienced right across Sydney, including in Mosman, St Ives, Bellevue Hill, Rosebery and Summer Hill.
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Max Maddison is a state political reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.
