KEY POINTS:
A massive power outage shut down Rotorua's CBD this morning after a fire at a substation.
"We had a fire on one of the circuit breakers on the Arawa substation, which is one of the main substations going into Rotorua," said Unison Networks spokesman Danny Gough.
The fire service was called out at 10.39am and the substation was shut down.
"(It) has affected 12,000 homes and businesses. That will be the main CBD and surrounding suburbs, so the majority of Rotorua really."
Work was under way to get power back on as quickly as possible, Mr Gough said.
"What we are looking at is alternate feeders so we can switch those customers over and we are hoping to have all of those people restored over the next two-hour period."
Mike Fletcher, executive director of the Journalism Training Organisation based in the city centre, said many buildings were back up and running by 11.30am.
He said people had reported surges and a brief outage at 10.30am before everything shut down about 10 minutes later.
Traffic lights went out and some shoppers and workers found themselves trapped in buildings with automatic doors but Mr Fletcher said everyone appeared to remain calm.
"I haven't heard any nasty squeakings of brakes. I did notice there were some people (stuck) inside stores but they've managed to lever the doors open or something.
"Roughly it looks as though trading and activity was interrupted for 40 minutes or thereabouts."
Fire communications shift manager Scott Osmond said the fire had started in some underground cables and was quickly extinguished.
He said it was not yet clear what had caused fire but it was possible the cables simply overheated.
- NZPA
