Hire generators gone in a hurry

Generators were in hot demand at Auckland hire services stores yesterday.

Frantic business owners and householders turned up on the doorstep of the East Tamaki Hirepool early in the morning to rent generators as the phone system was down.

"We had 20 to 30 customers knocking on the door but we only had 10 generators,"said Hirepool East Tamaki assistant manager, Ronald Chand.

Dave Thrower, manager of the city branch of Hirepool, said every single one of the company's "couple of hundred generators" had been taken by 11am.

A variety of companies ranging from law firms to radio broadcasting station UMA had come in for generators, said Daniel Islip, deputy manager of the Manukau branch of Hirepool.

Mr Islip blamed the sudden rush on "New Zealand's terrible weather" and people not being prepared for the outage.

His sentiment was shared by Jody Simmons of North Shore Hirepool.

"We were not ready, we close our life to that kind of thing. We take power for granted," he said.

The most common generators being hired out are the 1.8KVA, 3KVA and 5KVA generators. The 5KVA costs $74.25 to hire for a day and is popular with construction sites.

The Boston Rd building site had hired one for the day, said the deputy manager of New Lynn Hirepool, Jim Walker.

Aucklanders would have been in for an unpleasant few days had the power crisis continued.

The Te Rapa branch of Hirepool in Hamilton ran out of generators because of the rugby and Fieldays, foiling any plans from Auckland to ship in generators from there.

The other major player on the generator scene, New Zealand Generator Hire, said they were too busy to comment further, but confirmed they were out of generators by lunchtime yesterday.