One killed, thousands without power as storms hit Australia

Wind gusts and storms lashed the Australian state of Victoria on Sunday, killing one woman and disrupting power supplies to more than 100,000 people.

Roughly 120,000 homes were without power across the country’s second-most populous state and Melbourne’s International Airport closed one of two runways, causing significant delays.

A woman in her 50s died when a tree fell on her home in the town of Milgrove, east of Melbourne, Victorian Emergency Management Commissioner Craig Lapsley said. Falling trees injured several other people.

The electricity outages come a week after severe storms and lighting strikes left all of South Australia state without power for nearly 24 hours, grinding industries to a halt.

An independent review into the South Australian blackout was launched on Friday, after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, of the conservative Liberal Party, blamed the state’s high dependence on renewables for the outage.

Turnbull’s assessment drew criticism from state leaders, who accused the prime minister of letting ideology drive his comments.