Chaos as fire knocks out power from Waikato to Northland

Auckland Mayor John Banks says the power cuts being experienced across Auckland this evening are the result of "reckless management" by Transpower.

Power was cut between Huntly and Whangarei after an outage at a transmission line south of Auckland around 3pm today.

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High-voltage power lines fell onto trees near Tamihere, about 9km southeast of Hamilton, causing a scrub fire and power outage at around 3pm, a spokesperson for northern fire communications said.

Mr Banks said it was "ridiculous" that power cuts of this magnitude could result from a fire on private land.

"How could that possibly close down so much of Auckland?" he asked.

Mr Banks said up to 10 per cent of the city had been "shut down" by the power cuts, and traffic was gridlocked.

"[The power cuts] are a result of under-investment, callous disregard by Government and reckless management by Transpower," Mr Banks said.

"It's simply not good enough that we continue to have this Third World power supply."

He said Transpower executives "on their huge salaries" would be "held to account" for today's power cuts.

"I'll be talking to the Prime Minister and other relevant ministers about this," he said.

Power to Auckland has been cut to about 5000 homes by lines company Northpower at the request of Transpower.

Lines company, Vector Energy chief executive Simon McKenzie said Vector had been instructed by Transpower to shutdown parts of the network.

"We fully appreciate the frustration that outages can cause and we will do our utmost to minimise their impact while normal operations on the transmission system are restored. It is essential to take this action in order to prevent a major outage of greater duration and spread," Mr McKenzie said.

Transpower expected the situation to return to normal about 7pm, Radio New Zealand reported.

Transpower has not returned calls from nzherald.co.nz.

nzherald.co.nz readers have reported traffic gridlock in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby with traffic backed-up all the way down College Hill and along Ponsonby Road.

Outages have also been reported in the Auckland suburbs of Epsom, Mt Eden, Remuera, Mt Wellington and on the North Shore in Takapuna, Glenfield, Cheltenham, Northcote and Henderson.

A police northern communications spokeswoman said Auckland, Counties Manukau and the North Shore were affected.

Senior Sergeant Chris Money of Auckland police said large areas of Manukau and Auckland City were out of power.

Mr Money said many traffic lights were not working.

"We've got traffic cars all over Auckland trying to deal with the traffic lights," he said. "It's particularly busy for us because of it."

He said the police were fielding large numbers of calls from the public related to the power outage.

- NZ HERALD STAFF