Updates at bottom of post, also make sure you keep an eye on the South Katoomba Rural Fire Brigade page for local news, the RTA Live Traffic Service for road closures, and the Cityrail Interruptions page for updates on the line status. You can also check the weather warnings via the BOM website and get real-time weather statistics direct from Katoomba BMCC weather station.

Earlier today we had our power flickering on and off thanks to 100km/h winds bring trees down onto the lines. Then some time around 3ish (at a guess) we completely lost power. We laughed it off at first, assuming it would come back soon, but it’s now after 7pm and still nothing.

About an hour after we lost power we went for a stroll around Leura to suss it all out. Most shops had closed up, but surprisingly Woolworths was still open on emergency power, just no hot food or fresh meats. Eftpos even worked! It was a good thing, considering we had no cash and not much food at home, so we stocked up for a lunch of cold meats and cheeses, and bought fish to cook for dinner (as at that point we still assumed it was a temporary thing).

We spent the afternoon in the loungeroom taking stock of things, and realised just how much we depended on power up here in the mountains. The sun was setting and it was getting cold… fast. Our heaters are gas but digitally controlled so we couldn’t turn them on. Our stove and heater are electric so can’t make hot drinks or heat the house up that way. We don’t have a BBQ or any way to cook, heat up water, or warm ourselves up. We didn’t even have any candles or torches, and to top it off I’d forgotten to plug the laptop in after using it earlier so it’s dead too.

We ran back to Woolworths and bought a dolphin torch and some LED touch lamps, and stocked up on batteries. By that point the place was packed with people buying up all the torches, batteries, etc.

We are now lying in bed freezing. We have got 3 doonas over us and I hung some blankets over the curtains for extra insulation. It’s well below zero at the moment, last check was -3′c. All we can hear are sirens in every direction and 100km/h+ winds that sounds like a non stop freight train.

What’s extra scary is how little news we have. There’s very little on twitter, nothing on any news sites, and no word about what’s going on or when we will get power back. I know the Blue Mountains isn’t that highly populated but it’s still 10,000 odd people, all with no power and dealing with sub zero temperatures.

I’m posting this from my iPhone which is the last device we have with any power left. Irene’s phone already died and the laptop too. My phone has 30% power left. Being an iPhone, that’s about an hour or so tops

I worry more for the elderly people and young kids. It’s COLD right now. Finger numbingly so. We are in a modern double-brick apartment with double-glazed windows and it’s still teeth chatteringly cold, but most houses up here are fibro or wood.

Update @ 8pm Tuesday:

Apparently we aren’t getting power back until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest! This is crazy.

Update @ 2pm Wednesday:

Oops sorry I didn’t realise I had comments turned off. I’ve approved all the comments now, I honestly didn’t expect anyone to even read this except a few family.

We got power back late last night, not exactly sure when but we think about 10pm or so? It was very shaky though, it kept dropping out and coming back for a couple hours, so we didn’t want to use the TV or computer or anything like that in case it got damaged by the fluctuations. We quickly heated up some milk for hot chocolates and boiled water for tea, then went to bed to sleep it all off.

We woke up this morning with power back to Leura but only sections of it, and lots of the mountains still has no power as of midday today according to texts/calls from friends and family.

The most upsetting thing about ALL this is the lack of news, lack of updates, or lack of ANY acknowledgement that there are 30,000+ people in sub-zero temperatures with no power, no news, nothing. It got a few mentions as a paragraph tacked on to other articles about the high winds, but seriously, wtf?! If this had happened on 1/10th the scale to a Sydney suburb you would’ve seen it ALL over the news (I remember living in Erskineville and we had a blackout just to that area, it was EVERYWHERE within minutes, news, radio, etc).

Very disappointing. It makes me wonder though, maybe we need a citizen-run online news/updates service up here in the mountains?

Update @ 3pm Wednesday:

My wife is an ER nurse at Katoomba and just texted me saying that the police there told her lots of people STILL don’t have power back now, and that some areas aren’t getting fixed until Thursday! Hope you guys without power are still ok.

I’ll try update stuff as I hear it as it’s obvious from the comments that lots of people are still without news/updates on the situation.

Just got a call from my mum, says her phone is just about to die. They’ve now been without power for over 24 hours. She lives down the back of Hazelbrook in the valley, her heaters aren’t working and she can’t get ANY information from anyone as to when she’s getting power back. I’m trying to get her up here to me in Leura because we still have power (unstable, but mostly works)… but the highway is still apparently closed in sections and they’re telling people not to use it.

This is fucking ridiculous (excuse the language, but it’s valid here)… there’s still very little news for anyone, very little in the papers, noone knows what’s going on. I would expect updates from the electricity company to be posted prominently to the major news sites so people who can check via their phones have SOME idea of what’s going on! Very very upsetting. I see barely any mention of any of this on http://www.news.com.au/national or http://www.smh.com.au/national.

Thankfully there’s a featured article on http://www.abc.net.au/news/nsw/ but it still hasn’t got much information for the THOUSANDS of residents stuck freezing cold in their dark homes right now. One of the news sites needs to setup an information page for residents to check back on the latest updates from SES, electrical companies, etc.