KEY POINTS:
Auckland police were unable to send officers to jobs on the busiest night of their working week when lightning struck communications technology in West Auckland during the weekend's stormy weather.
The bolts of energy hit a microwave tower in Henderson about 5pm, killing radio contact between officers on the beat and the northern communications centre until about midnight.
Police say their national computer system meant staff at the central communications centre in Wellington were able to take over.
Personnel at both centres told the Herald they did not believe there were any problems attending incidents because of the outage.
However, Inspector Willie Taylor of the northern communications centre said staff in smaller areas such as Northland, Tauranga and Rotorua had to revert to dispatching squad cars to incidents using the stations' radios.
Local dispatching started to be phased out when New Zealand's three communication centres began in 1996, but police still regularly practise how to cope in such emergencies.
Mr Taylor said Saturday's outage would have caused more problems if telephone systems were down.
Central communications shift commander Inspector Steve Darroch said three extra staff were called in to manage the diverted Auckland dispatching.
Asked if it was a stressful night, Mr Darroch said: "It's a always a bit of a surprise when these things happen but we do train for them and plan for it and practise it."
Fire Service communications were also affected, but only for an hour.
