Endeavour Energy and Ausgrid say more than 750 electrical hazards need to be repaired before supply can be restored

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

More than 55,000 properties in Sydney and the central coast are still without power after thunderstorms savaged the New South Wales coast and the clean-up is expected to take several days.

Torrential rain, damaging wind and hailstones the size of golf balls lashed Sydney and the Hunter region on Saturday afternoon, bringing down trees and taking out hundreds of power lines.

Sydney’s north was hardest hit with parts of the Parramatta and Campbelltown areas and the southern part of the central coast also damaged.

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The SES said it had received close to 7,000 calls for help, mainly for fallen trees and roof damage.

Emergency services are expecting these calls for help to continue for the next 24 hours as they brace for more severe thunderstorms that are forecast over the next 48 hours.

Network operators Endeavour Energy and Ausgrid said more than 750 electrical hazards needed to be repaired before supply could be restored to 55,000 homes.

The hazards include a number of snapped poles that left a twisted mess of downed powerlines in many locations – repairing the sites is expecting to take hundreds of hours of work.

“This was a devastating storm that caused extensive damage to the electricity network,” an Endeavour Energy spokesman, Peter Payne, said on Sunday. “Many of our customers in the worst affected areas would not have seen damage like this for years.”

The scale of the damage and the complexity of the repair work means some Endeavour Energy customers will still be without power on Sunday night, Payne said.

The company is urging those who are still without power to provide help to their elderly neighbours.

Ausgrid’s Jonathan Hall said repairs could take a while.

“Unfortunately, it’s taking time because that does involve in some places putting in new power poles and new power lines and unfortunately that type of repair takes some time,” he told ABC.

The power interruption is currently still affecting traffic lights in the Hills area and power may not be restored to some intersections until Sunday afternoon, Transport for NSW said.

Trains across Sydney were back to normal service on Sunday morning after crews worked “extremely hard overnight to recover from the storm damage,” a Transport for NSW spokeswoman said.

Sunday’s weather is expected to remain overcast with a high chance of further showers and a risk of an afternoon thunderstorm.