Many homes still without power following storm
Saturday, 6 January 2018
Thousands of households across the North Island are still without power following Friday's battering summer storm.
Heavy rains and strong winds lashed the country on Friday, downing trees and lines.
On Saturday morning, Vector reported 16 outages across Auckland.
A very relieved Barry Haworth had power restored to his Stillwater home late on Saturday morning, 36 hours after it was cut off.
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The north Auckland resident said they lost power at 11pm on Thursday and had been 'pulling their hair out' since.
As Haworth lives on a lifestyle block, he needed a generator to keep water and sewerage systems running.
'Everything runs to a stop … it was a real struggle,' he said.
Haworth followed Vector's outage app, but said the estimated time power would be restored kept being pushed out another 6-12 hours.
'The biggest thing for us was not being able to get information properly to find out what was going on.'
Haworth wasn't alone: Some affected areas, including Orere Point near Kawakawa Bay, have been without power for up to 24 hours.
Vector spokesman Matthew Britton said they were prioritising outages affecting large groups of customers and working through smaller and individual service faults.
Vector had boosted the capacity of the website and outage app to ensure they could manage demand from people looking for updates, and have additional crews working to restore power.
'The safety of our crew and the public is our first priority and we're continuing to work through all outstanding jobs, including three additional incidents last night where vehicles hit power poles causing new outages,' he said.
More than 1700 homes were without power across Hamilton, Coromandel and Tauranga as of 12pm, according to Powerco.
Meanwhile in Rotorua, crews were working to restore power to around 1200 people.
Unison power relationship manager Danny Gough said the rural areas around Rotorua were largely affected.
Gough said they would be working near State Highway 5 around Mamaku, Tarawera, Okere Falls, Rerewhakaaitu and Tikitere to get power back on.
'Crews have been out since early this morning and the weather so far and forecast for the rest of the day is encouraging,' he said.
They were hopeful all customers would have power restored by the end of Saturday.
'We know that it's been a long time without power for our most affected customers and once again we really appreciate their patience and understanding as we work to fix the damage caused by this storm,' Gough said.
Further down country, strong winds had cut power to 168 homes in Stratford, 95 in Whanganui and 308 homes in Featherston.