Swan cuts power to 2500 homes in Hawkes Bay

Thousands of households in Napier and Hastings lost power yesterday after two outages, one caused by a swan.

More than 2587 Hawkes Bay homes were without power for up to half an hour last night after the swan flew into power lines in Whakatu at 3.54pm.

Unison customer relations manager Danny Gough said the swan incident caused a chain reaction that shut down the Rangitane sub-station.

Buildings from Napier and Hastings briefly lost power from the outage and some customers in Whakatu, Haumoana and Clive were without power for about half an hour.

"You can't do much about a bird strike," Mr Gough said. "There was ongoing work to make sure we were back to normal."

The incident caused a chain reaction resulting in the failure of a connecting piece of equipment called a jumper at 4.45pm on the corner of Tomoana Rd and Williams St in Mahora.

The jumper and cable fell from the 30,000-volt lines onto the 11,000-volt lines.

Local resident Ahmed Abdulle saw it happen and said there was a loud noise and fire.

"I'd just finished work and I saw the power line come off on the side and bounce three times on the other line," he said. "It was really dangerous. It was lucky no one was walking there."

By 7.15pm 98 per cent of households had their power restored, with the all power restored by 8.23pm.

The swan's fate following the powerful powerful encounter was unconfirmed.

"I'm not sure what the fate of the swan was, but I wouldn't be hopeful," Mr Gough said.