The power to Beryl's street was off at 8am yesterday due to work being done nearby on New South Wales' hottest day so far this summer. Picture: Tim Hunter
Workers near 77-year-old Beryl Boatswain's home in Colyton in Sydney's west. Picture: Tim Hunter Source: The Daily Telegraph
IT'S perhaps not what you want to happen on the hottest day in Australian history.
As the mercury slipped over 42C, 40,000 Sydneysiders were left without power.
No airconditioning. No fans. No cold beers in the fridge.
Power supplier Ausgrid reported multiple failures across its network, from Jannali and Oyster Bay to Rockdale, Bexley and Kogarah, while 1800 homes were without power in Balgowlah after a fault on a connection line.
And in a case of deplorable timing, Endeavour Energy cut power to several Colyton streets for scheduled repairs.
Beryl Boatswain, 77, was having trouble breathing and had taken three cold showers before 11am.
She said Endeavour wrote to residents a month ago warning of the outage.
"I tried to ring them yesterday but I couldn't get through," she said. "Why wouldn't they change it if they knew about the heat?"
Endeavour, which had slated the works for 8am to 4pm, started moving workers out of the street about midday.
"We reviewed the planned work in Arthur Place and Leonard St, Colyton (on Monday) in light of (yesterday's) forecast temperature extremes and reduced the scope of the job to essential repair work," a spokeswoman said.
The work involved a critical upgrade to a transformer that was not likely to withstand the forecasted 43C.
"If this transformer failed, longer outages affecting many more customers would have resulted," she said.
Yesterday's heatwave was likely to have broken a record, albeit one set just one day earlier. Monday was officially the hottest day in Australian history, the national average maximum soaring to 40.33C - 0.16C above the previous record on December 21, 1972.
Early indications from the weather bureau suggest yesterday should easily take that crown and by a similar margin.
Sydney sweated through its fifth hottest day on record with a maximum of 42.3C at Observatory Hill at 2.03pm.
Sydney Airport was marginally hotter at 42.5C, Albion Park south of Wollongong hit 43.1C and Wilcannia scorched at 45.7C.
More than 25,000 people took refuge at Bondi Beach, with Bondi Lifeguards team leader Rod Kerr saying at least 10,000 people were in the water at one time.
Hundreds hit the beach during the heatwave in Bondi. Picture: Katrina Tepper Source: The Daily Telegraph
Bondi residents Brenda Boeder and Lucius Borich took their sons Zappa, 4, and Kyuss, 2, to the beach.
"There is an exorbitant amount of people in the water today," Ms Boeder said. "Everybody is usually sitting on the beach ... and you can't get a spot. But today there's so many people in the water."
The heat was particularly brutal on the elderly and infirm. Paramedics responded to more than 15 cases of heat exposure across Sydney after 2pm and dozens of "heat-related illness" including nausea, headaches, dizziness and loss of cohesion - with 70 per cent of the patients elderly.
"We've definitely seen a rise in heat-related illness and that goes hand in hand with a dramatic increase in heat exposure," a NSW Ambulance Service spokesman said.
Locals Jordan Sanchez and Jordan Giffin cool off under the showers at Avoca Beach during the heatwave. Picture: Peter Clark Source: The Daily Telegraph
"We were seeing a slight increase in incidents this morning (but) as the temperature started to rocket up past 40C about 2pm these incidents started rolling in."
Two bridge climbers had to be escorted off the Sydney Harbour Bridge in separate incidents after suffering from heat exhaustion.
A teenage boy collapsed at 1.05pm, with paramedics forced to scale the bridge to treat him, while a teenage girl had to be escorted off the bridge after complaining of feeling dizzy at 11.10am.
A BridgeClimb spokeswoman said the temperature on top of the bridge was just 32C and wasn't hot enough to cancel climbs.
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