The clean-up is continuing after a severe storm hit the New South Wales North Coast on Sunday afternoon leaving thousands without power and displacing some patients at Lismore Base Hospital.
Essential Energy said crews worked through the night to restore power to more than 7,000 customers.
It said extra crews have been brought in from across the region to hopefully restore power to remaining customers today.
“We don’t have an estimated time of restore at the moment … we’ve got a long number of wires in the Corndale area,” Rachel Hussell from Essential Energy said.
“We really want to remind people, if you do see wires down or vegetation in powerlines, to stay at least eight metres away and call us.”
Strong winds, heavy rain and hail caused scaffolding outside the Lismore Base Hospital to become loose, falling onto the roof of the maternity unit.
About a dozen patients and several babies were in the maternity ward when the storm hit, chief executive of the Northern NSW Local Health District Chris Crawford said.
“They spent the night in another part of Lismore Base Hospital after they were triaged and checked by our doctors and nurses to make sure that they were safe and that they weren’t too unnerved by the experience,” Mr Crawford said.
“We had a storm cell that came right over Lismore Base Hospital and that caused some of the new building work we’re doing, particularly the scaffolding, to fall off the building works and fall onto our maternity unit.
“The nurses did the right thing. They [moved] the patients [into] a safe area of the ward and as this shrapnel fell down on the ceiling, and in fact pierced some of the ceiling, the patients were able to be kept safe.”
No-one was hurt, but Tracey Ryan, who was a patient in a room a few metres down from the maternity ward, said one woman and her baby, born six weeks premature, had a lucky escape.
“She’d rung her husband just a few minutes before and he said get off the phone and get away from the windows there’s a massive storm coming, so she did that and she stepped out into the corridor and she had to happen to be right where the collapse of the ceiling was,” she said.
Mr Crawford hopes patients will be able to return to the ward later this week.
“I’ve been focused on making sure that we get Health Infrastructure, who are running our building program, to come up and look at this work that has come unstuck,” Mr Crawford said.
He said WorkCover would also inspect the site.
Lismore hospital building standards to be assessed
Head of the local health district, Chris Crawford, said he would be meeting with Health Infrastructure today to question the grading of any new works to ensure the hospital can withstand storms that are common in the region.
“Are we sure we’re building our buildings strong enough to be able to stand up to those storms?” he said.
“A bit like if you’re in an earthquake zone buildings are built to a particular standard to resist earthquakes.
“When you’re in an area of severe storms like we are here in the Northern Rivers, are we building with that in mind or are we just building to normal standards?”
The State Emergency Service (SES) said it had received more than 155 calls for help, mostly for fallen trees and roof damage.
“Lismore city alone had 93 jobs that we’ve [been] asked to assist with residents, so it has been very busy,” SES duty operations officer Jenny Slater said.
“We’re confident the jobs will be completed by today.”