Pylon collapse inquiry didn’t speak to contractors who removed the bolts

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

The Electricity Authority has completed an inquiry into the collapse of a Transpower pylon in June without speaking to the workers who removed too many bolts to find out why they did that, the head of the inquiry Sarah Sinclair has admitted.

The collapse of the pylon in Gorit, north-west of Auckland left 88,000 people without power and cost Northland between $37.5 million and $80m in lost economic activity, the authority has estimated.

Its 152-page report confirmed the pylon collapsed because workers from contracting company Omexom had simultaneously removed bolts from three of the pylon’s four legs during maintenance.

That was instead of following “standard practice” and only having one leg unsecured at any time.

Sinclair, chairperson of law firm MinterEllisonRuddWatts, acknowledged it had not been able to speak to the workers who were on site to find out what was going through their minds when they did that, or their motivation.

“We asked the questions. We got a series of information from the contractor, but some of it was subjective,” she said.

The report said there was evidence removing bolts from more than one leg-tower at a time was “not an isolated one-off event”, but Sinclair said it had no information on how often that might have happened.

Energy Minister Simeon Brown said he would be seeking advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment on whether the Electricity Authority could be given extra powers to demand information.

Despite being unable to speak to the workers or get a firm handle on past practices, Brown and the Electricity Authority said they were able to learn lessons from the inquiry.

Brown said the report found Transpower was over-reliant on service providers to ensure that critical assets were maintained.

“It also found that identifiable risks were missed, including concerns that were raised internally,” he said.

A senior Transpower engineer raised concerns in 2021 regarding “a gap in the knowledge of maintenance crews undertaking foundation work” but recommendations for improvement were not acted on, he said.

“Transpower failing to act on these opportunities has led to terrible consequences for the people of Northland,” Brown said.

“These are incredibly concerning findings and the report identifies a number of recommendations that I expect Transpower will fully accept and act with urgency to address.”

Detailing the impacts of the outage, the report highlighted the situation faced by Cellini's Ice Cream & Espresso Bar in Paihia, which saw its “entire stock of ice cream” worth between $5000 and $6000 melt when power to its freezers was cut off.

Electricity Authority chief executive Sarah Gillies indicated it was not yet clear whether households and businesses who were impacted by the outage might be entitled to any compensation.

“The compliance process does allow for certain orders to be made, but we're not at the end of that process yet,” Gillies said.

Omexom New Zealand managing director Mornez Green apologised to all who were affected

“We’ve been doing this type of work successfully for decades,” he said.

“As a result of the incident, Omexom immediately undertook its own organisation-wide review and has introduced a range of changes to prevent recurrence of any similar event.”

Resources Minister Shane Jones blasted Transpower over the accident, making clear he thought heads should roll.

“Northlanders lost millions of dollars and I have never heard of anyone either losing their job or being held responsible,” he said.

“The new chief executive needs to find out who caused that within the organisation and send them to the knacker’s yard,” he said.

Transpower grid delivery manager Mark Ryall said it was “committed to doing whatever we can to ensure an event like this never happens again and to improving regional resilience”.