North Island properties face King’s Birthday Weekend without power days after storm

The Vector outage map as of 1pm May 31. Photo / Vector

Hundreds of Auckland and Waikato properties remain without power after a fierce storm battered the upper North Island.

At its peak, more than 50,000 electricity company customers across both regions were without power on Wednesday.

Vector said the areas without power in Auckland had now been reduced to “pockets”.

“Significant progress was made overnight but there are still some pockets without power, mostly in the north and west.”

Vector said it has contacted customers to keep them informed of progress.

“Crews will be working hard throughout the day and we expect to have restored power to the vast majority of customers this evening.

“We understand that power outages are frustrating and inconvenient, and thank our customers for their patience and understanding as we work to get their power back on.

“At its peak, around 24,000 customers were without power – this represents around 4 per cent of our customer base and was over a very short time when it was unsafe for our crews to be out responding.”

Vector said all outages had been caused by fallen trees and vegetation, which makes them “tricky” to repair.

“We’re reminding people to please stay away from any downed power lines or damaged network equipment and to call 111 if they see any.

“We also ask that members of the public do not remove any fallen branches themselves.”

Counties Energy said it had reduced the power cuts from more than 200 properties yesterday afternoon to 44 faults today.

“We currently have 44 individual faults scattered around the region affecting around 484 customers.

“However, around half of that number is from new outages this morning. We have 150 customers still impacted from the storm – 34 active jobs remaining ...

“These will be completed by nightfall – or we have generated power to complex fixes.”

Counties Energy said the faults on the network from Wednesday are largely rural and are the result of tree debris/vegetation.

“There are still a number of faults in the Waiuku and Awhitu Peninsula area and in the wider Karaka area.

“Many of the remaining outages are complex fixes and require tree work.

”Our faults resolution process is to make safe first, then restore as many properties as quickly as possible - we are now dealing with the individual, isolated and more complex fixes.”

WEL Network outage map as of 1pm on Friday, May 31. Photo / WEL Network

In Waikato, most people have had their power restored. About 22,000 customers were originally affected by the outages.

WEL Networks said that after a “concerted effort from our teams” power was successfully restored to a majority of customers in the Raglan and Te Uku areas last night.

“We are now down to low numbers of customers that remain without power and restoration efforts remain our priority today.

“We’ve got all available resource working on this and we’ve called in contractor resource to help with the amount of damage we’re needing to repair.”