Power outage shocks businesses

A large power outage sent holiday-makers heading for home in the popular Whangaruru Harbour area, as water and petrol pumps failed, toilets could not be flushed and fridges and freezers fell silent during the weekend.

Some campervan and caravan tourists found themselves marooned on the coast because they did not have enough fuel to get to the nearest petrol station.

Lines company Northpower said it believes the outage may have been caused by an insulator and conductor being hit by a bullet. A helicopter brought in to assist with locating the fault spotted a damaged pole near the road on the boundary of a forest block near Mokau.

Power was restored to all customers by mid-day yesterday, but not before Travis O'Malley and Nena Rogers, owners of Oakura Bay Stores and The Tin Tui Cafe, had lost thousands of dollars in income and ruined stock.

The business runs 23 chillers and stock levels were extremely high at this time of the year, said Mr O'Malley.

"Deliveries are on the way as we speak and what do we do?" he asked.

The couple frantically moved product out of their biggest freezer to smaller ones in case sudden restoration of power blew out its compressor, involving huge repair costs.

"We've been through outages before and we know all about blown-out compressors. We've had eight in 16 years. The longest outage was 24 hours when a forestry company dropped a tree on the line. Outages have massive impact on a business like this.

"We are still recovering from the big storm of 2007 when the road was blocked for weeks and the expense of having to put in petrol pumps when Shell withdrew from the area the same year. This setback comes on top of a poor-performance summer. It's incredibly disappointing," Mr O'Malley said.

A generator big enough to keep all their chillers going through summer was beyond their financial resources. Stock losses were covered by insurance but the business had to pay the first $2000; meanwhile loss of trade over the last long weekend of summer was not covered. He said he feels sorriest for the people who earn a living looking after holiday homes.

"The owners couldn't clean up when they left. I know someone who has to go in and do the dishes and wash and clean everything in about 12 baches," he said.

Power began to fail intermittently just before the weekend in an area stretching from Whakapara 23km north-west of Whangarei, north to the area of Whangaruru harbour, including the Oakura settlement and Bland Bay, culminating in a complete outage from 4.30am on Monday.

General manager of Northpower's network division, Graham Dawson, said the fault would have been extremely difficult to spot quickly from the ground.

"We were almost at the point of having to climb every pole along that section of the line which would have been very time-consuming," he said. The company had done a huge amount of recent maintenance on the Helena Bay/Bland Bay line and there was more to come, he said, but in this case "there appeared to be possible third party damage to the insulator. The pole and cross-arm were in very good condition".

He said the company spent around $20 million annually on maintenance and asset replacement.