Staying well away from the line crews, we took some stolen shots of the restoration work they were doing in Alawa this morning. You can see the extent of damage done by Cyclone Marcus – to the network, trees, cars and everything else in its path when it hit last weekend.

These photos are typical of the remaining individual jobs to reconnect customers, which often require our crews to clear trees or cut through damaged steel poles and safely remove wires which lay strewn on the ground.

For these jobs we need cranes and a raft of other heavy machinery for instance, to remove the old poles and install the new poles nearby, which requires fresh concrete to be poured and set before we can commence work getting the network back together. Once the new poles are in, we then use the cranes to re-string the wires before the crew go up in bucket trucks and individually re-wire every connection at the top of the power pole.

Once that’s complete, we then go house-to-house in the immediate area and repair and reconnect individual service lines to each house.

This all takes time and must be done safely, so we empathise with those customers that have been without power for a week now. As you have probably seen around the streets, we have mobilised every crew member and every available vehicle to help in the restoration effort.

Updates on restoration progress of power and water supply are available by following @PowerWaterCorp on Facebook and Twitter. Not on social? No problems – our feed also appears on the Current bulletins page and the homepage of our website.

Community information and weather maps are available from the Secure NT website.