Review of hospital after power cut

Parts of Wellington went without power this afternoon. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Wellington Hospital chiefs will today review how the facility responded to yesterday's power cut in the capital, hoping to discover why one generator failed to automatically start.

An object falling onto live equipment at an electricity substation cut power from about 3.20pm-4.30pm, blacking out shops and offices trapping people in lifts ahead of rush hour.

National grid operator Transpower is investigating what happened to prevent a recurrence.

The fault at Transpower's Wilton substation cut power to about 84,000 households from Seatoun in the south to Khandallah in the north and happened while maintenance was being carried out on the substation.

Transpower general manager of systems operations Kieran Devine said a piece of wire was dropped, or blown by the wind, on to live equipment.

A Capital and Coast District Health Board spokesman said the hospital's first generator kicked in immediately.

"The reason we can say this with complete faith and confidence is that we had people in operating theatres and operations continued smoothly," he said.

"We also know that there were no hiccups in the intensive care unit, which is always the first port of call, or the neo-nates."

However, the second generator had to be manually rebooted.

"It's more of a backup up but what it meant is that normally the generators will kick in and all the hospital, all the lights, everything, comes back on," the spokesman said.

"But with the second generator not working immediately, they took the power out of administration blocks and focussed everything on the clinical areas."

The board would today try to establish why the generator did not automatically kick in.

Mr Devine said an investigation by Transpower and the contractor, Transfield, would find out what exactly happened, and how it could be prevented from happening again.

Throughout the city shops were without power, meaning there was no eft-pos and many had to stop trading.

"Most traffic lights were on back-up power system, so traffic's not in chaos, but trolley buses stopped, a few reports of people stuck in lifts," Wellington City Council spokesman Richard Maclean said, before power was restored.

Trains ran but the public address system at Wellington Railway Station was out, an Ontrack spokesman said.

A small segment of track north of Wellington station, to Kaiwharawhara, was affected but there was enough power to drive trains through the section, he said.

Train barrier arms appeared to be working normally, although police received reports that some were down and drivers had driven around them despite the fact the trains were still running.

There had been some near misses at traffic lights that had gone out, with drivers not sticking to the give way rules, Sergeant Mark Oliver said.

The police communications centre was unaffected, although there were more calls than usual.

- NZPA