Power outages have struck two suburbs in Central Auckland, with residents in one reporting a “loud bang” before going dark.
An outage in Grey Lynn was reported shortly after 6pm, with Vector on its way to investigate the outage just before 6.30pm.
Residents in Grey Lynn reported hearing a “loud bang” in the area.
“Big red explosion, fire brigade here now and Vector on their way,” one posted.
“Was a huge explosion,” another said.
Vector told the Herald crews are onsite to assess and safely restore power.
“Some customers are impacted by a power outage in Grey Lynn which was caused by a helium balloon touching the lines,” the spokesperson said.
“A reminder to the public to stay safe and keep away from downed lines treating them as live at all times.”
Vector said 130 customers in Grey Lynn will remain without power until the repairs have been made.
Another outage, covering a large area of Newmarket and Grafton, was reported to Vector – Auckland’s electricity distributor – at 2.58pm.
A Vector spokesperson told the Herald crews were working in Grafton to repair an underground cable fault that occurred earlier this afternoon.
“We will get the power back on as quickly as we can. We understand the inconvenience of a power outage on the eve of a long weekend. Our crews are working hard to restore power for those customers impacted.”
Shortly before 8pm the spokesperson said power had been restored to all customers in Newmarket.
It comes a day after Watercare shut off water to large parts of West Auckland after a large-diameter water main broke in Henderson Valley.
About 3000 people were without water on Thursday evening and about 15,000 had low pressure.
Watercare chief operations officer Mark Bourne said its contractors completed the fix at 1.30am.
The affected suburbs were Henderson, Henderson Valley, Glen Eden, Kaurilands, Sunnyvale and Ōrātia. The outage also impacted parts of Glendene, Konini, north Titirangi, Kelston and Waitākere.
Bourne warned some of the water might appear milky or discoloured, but testing this morning had shown it was safe to drink.
Speakers from both sides spoke about the need for collaboration.