Tens of thousands in south-east Victoria without power after explosion
Loud blasts have rocked a Victorian town as high-voltage powerline faults cut power to 80,000 people.
The faults near a Morwell substation caused a large flashover, smoke and a loud cracking noise, power company SP AusNet said.
A blackout hit 80,000 people in the Latrobe Valley and further out in East Gippsland, but power has now been restored to most homes.
A high-voltage power line fell onto another near the Morwell substation, sparking a grassfire that has been brought under control, the CFA said.
Local residents say they heard loud blasts.
Witness Jaye Atlee, who filmed the incident, told the ABC it looked like "a type of electrical storm".
I've never seen anything like it. It was a bit of a glow and a really loud rumble," she said.
"I was getting ready for work and I heard the rumble through my house. I thought my house was on fire or something was happening.
"All the electricity dimmed and turned off and I sort of ran outside and looked over the back of the balcony and there it was."
"It was a deep, rumbling, arcing noise and then all of a sudden I saw this massive fireball," David, who lives near Morwell, told ABC radio.
"At first I thought we were under attack from an atomic bomb.
"It looked like a mushroom cloud going up and you could see the electrical arcing that was going through the cloud. It was carrying the arcing with it."
SP AusNet said the outage affecting Gippsland occurred about 7.30am (AEDT) on Friday due to several powerline faults inside and near the Morwell Terminal Station.
About 2000 customers remained without power in several pockets of Morwell by 10am.
Morwell was recently blanketed with smoke after a deliberately-lit blaze spotted into the nearby Hazelwood coal mine in February and burned for 45 days.
