Power outage restored after hitting Napier CBD as thousands of cruise passengers arrived

Kolachi cafe on Emerson St lost most its power on Monday and was forced to close temporarily at a peak time. Pictured are owner Jaz Singh (left), along with his staff team. Photo / Gary Hamilton-Irvine

A power outage took out supply to a chunk of Napier’s central business district during a busy retail period with passengers from two cruise ships in town.

The unscheduled outage hit late morning on Monday and was caused by a suspected cable fault, according to Unison.

The outage started at 10.41am and power began to return to some businesses by 11.15am, but power supply continued to fluctuate in the city for the next 45 minutes.

The outage affected about 200 properties on Dickens St, Dalton St, Station St, Emerson St, Hastings St and Marine Parade, among others.

Some shops and eateries were without power for over an hour. All properties had power returned by noon.

The outage hit as passengers from two cruise ships, the 3100-passenger cruise ship Grand Princess and the 2770-passenger Resilient Lady, were in town.

The owner of Kolachi cafe on Emerson St, Jaz Singh, said it was tough timing, and they were forced to close while the power was out and eventually opted not to reopen for the day as it was one of the last areas to have power restored.

“We have no other option than to close at this point because we don’t know when power is returning,” Singh said during the outage, which hit his cafe for more than an hour.

He said it would have been an extremely busy period, given the influx of foot traffic from the visiting cruises.

“We are only open until 2pm so this is pretty much peak hours of operation,” Singh said.

“It would have been out the gate [busy].”

A power outage took out supply to a large chunk of Napier’s central business district. Photo / Gary Hamilton-Irvine

Cool Toys, in the Napier CBD, had its power back on sooner, but worker Garrett Chan said they had just opened the store when the power went out.

He said with cruise ships visiting the city, it was bad timing to have the outage.

Chan said they could only do cash sales during the outage. Thousands of tourists were strolling around the city at the time.

A Unison statement said the cause of the power outage was a “suspected cable fault”.

“We will know more once we have excavated and examined the cable.”