Loud explosions have rocked the town of Morwell and up to 80,000 power customers are without power in Victoria’s east.
A spokesman for power company SP AusNet said the power fault had caused a large ‘‘flashover’’, smoke and a cracking noise.
He said many of the 80,000 customers who lost power had now been reconnected.
‘‘There was a large outage in Gippsland this morning around 7.30am due to several powerline faults inside and near the Morwell Terminal Station, which saw 80,000 customers lose their power supply,’’ he said.
‘‘Crews were dispatched immediately and we have reconnected the power supply to all bar 2000 customers around Morwell.’’
The power company has yet to find the cause of the fault.
A Country Fire Authority spokeswoman said about half a kilometre of high-voltage power lines came down on Commercial Road, Morwell, starting a small grassfire.
The fallen lines also caused a major “trip” at a substation, causing the power outage, she said.
The spokeswoman said she could not comment on the explosion.
