Power has been restored in Rotorua after thousands of people were affected by a major city-wide outage.
According to lines company Unison’s outages page, 22,953 customers were affected in more than 40 suburbs.
The power went out at 1.54pm.
A Unison statement at 3.05pm said Transpower had restored power to its network.
1News reported Transpower said the outage was caused by a switching error at the Rotorua substation on Titoki Pl, and they would investigate what happened.
Unison said: “We’re now working to progressively restore power as quickly and safely as we can to the wider region.
“Unfortunately this could take as long as one hour to gradually restore each area safely, prioritising lines that connect critical sites like the hospital and CBD areas.
“We apologise for this inconvenience and thank you all for your patience and understanding while we work with Transpower to get you back up and running again.”
Power came back on in the Rotorua Daily Post’s CBD office about 2.59pm, and outside drivers could be heard beeping their horns in apparent excitement.
A Unison spokesman earlier said a “major” Transpower outage was impacting more than 22,000 customers in the Rotorua region.
Unison encouraged customers to check for updates on its Facebook page.
A police spokesman told the Rotorua Daily Post there were reports of traffic lights being out along Amohau St and police were attending in a traffic management capacity.
A police statement confirmed the outage had impacted traffic lights and advised motorists to take care in the CBD.
Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell said: “We encourage everyone to please take care, especially on the roads if the traffic lights are down.
“Our community including police and council will be assisting in any way that we can ... please be considerate of others and cautious when out driving, especially around our schools”.
Health NZ Lakes said Rotorua Hospital had back-up generators so all clinical spaces were still operational.
”If you have an appointment, or require emergency treatment, please continue to attend unless you hear otherwise.”
Ray Singh, owner of The Indian Star and Urban Gusto on Eat Streat, told the Rotorua Daily Post his power was out for about an hour.
Singh said it impacted Eftpos.
”The whole of Eat Streat was closed. “
Singh said he had “three or four” tables of customers at The Indian Star and “a couple more” tables at Urban Gusto when the power went out.
He said he had a rechargeable mobile Eftpos machine with a SIM card so customers could still pay.
Owner of Teariffic Bubble Milk Tea ar the Lakefront and ice cream and bubble tea shop, Scoop’d, on Tarawera Rd, Chris Senerpida, said the power outage affected Eftpos at both locations for less than 30 minutes.”I did call our Eftpos provider and they just turned on the 4G so we were back up and running.”
He said power had since been restored.
Christopher Connel's last words to police before he died were that he 'loved life'.