Tauranga cafe owners angry as power cut again

By JULIET ROWAN

Downtown Tauranga was hit by a power cut for the second day in a row yesterday, leaving business owners angry at loss of lunchtime trade.

The power cut began at 12.30pm and affected 2000 Powerco customers.

It came a day after two faults, six hours apart, left more than 1200 Powerco customers in the central business district without electricity for periods on Wednesday morning.

Supply was also cut on July 30 after a car hit a power pole.

Craig Garner, chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce Tauranga region, said the cuts had caused significant disruptions to businesses in the central business district.

"There's definitely some upset people, no doubt about it."

Cafes and restaurants had been worst hit, but offices had also suffered, he said.

"When your computers and phones go down, you're sitting round doing nothing."

The cuts on Wednesday, which happened after an underground explosion and a transformer box fire, were estimated to have cost businesses tens of thousands of dollars.

Bella Mia Pizzeria Ristorante was forced to close for more than two hours during lunchtime yesterday.

Owner Giuseppe Bella Mia said it was the third time his business had been disrupted in the past two weeks.

"It's like Baghdad," he said. "Our patience is running very, very thin."

At the Cinema 8 theatre complex, management gave patrons free movie passes when the outage interrupted film screenings.

Powerco said it had restored supply to all affected customers by 3.30pm. It said yesterday's faults were the result of pressure on a heavily used section of the network.

General manager of network assets Richard Krogh said work was under way to ensure the power cuts of the past two days were not repeated.

Powerco would spend $14 million on the Tauranga network in the next year.