BLACKOUT!

Sewage was on the verge of pouring into Lake Rotorua after about 12,000 Rotorua homes and businesses lost power after a sub-station explosion.

Power failed about 12.50pm yesterday, forcing businesses in the central city to close and creating chaos on the roads as traffic lights failed.

Rotorua Hospital reverted to back-up generators and the power cut almost sent sewage flowing into Lake Rotorua.

Treacherous weather conditions brought down power poles and lines last night meant more than 40 rural Rotorua homes were still without power this morning.

The blackout was caused by a fault at a Transpower substation in Malfroy Rd. A Transpower spokesman said the cause wasn't known but work was being carried out at the time, and the explosion may have been caused by human error. The Fire Service was called to the substation but wasn't needed. They were also called to several false alarms caused by the power cut.

Unison spokesman Bill Hewitt said all the central business district and much of the western side of town was affected. The power company brought in extra power from its other substations to get power back on in the city within 45 minutes.



Restoring power to crucial areas like the central business district, hospital and pump stations was the priority. About 12,000 of Unison's 20,000 customers were affected.

Mr Hewitt said compensation wasn't an issue unless it took more than three hours to get power back.

Rotorua District Council utilities operations manager Eric Cawte said it was the biggest power cut to affect the city's wastewater treatment plant in more than a decade. It affected all the council's pumping stations.

Standby generators were used and although there were about 10 minutes when sewerage overflowed into a nearby holding drain, Mr Cawte was confident there was no spillage into the lake.

However, there would have been spillage had the outage continued much longer.

The wastewater treatment plant had only "20-odd" minutes of storage and no generator big enough to cope with the flow - partly because of cost but also the rarity of such power cuts, he said.

Power was restored to the plant earlier than other customers.



Banks, shops and businesses were forced to close for security and health and safety reasons but those on gas stayed open. Petrol stations reported queues of motorists waiting for power to be restored so they could continue filling up.

Lakes District Health Board communications officer Sue Wilkie said Rotorua Hospital's emergency generator kicked in immediately and no patients were affected. Life support equipment had its own back-up battery supply.

At Rotorua's courthouse, Judge Paul Geoghegan was forced to adjourn a case.

"I'm used to working in dark but not this much in the dark," he said.

The Pig & Whistle and Hennessy's Irish Bar were able to continue cooking lunch for patrons as they had back-up gas cooking.

Salon St Bruno's receptionist Carolyne Alton said clients were halfway through hair colours and cuts when the blackout hit, causing considerable disruption. Fortunately, with the water heated by gas, staff were still able to rinse out hair colours.

Mrs Alton said the outage would have cost the business some revenue.

People needing x-rays at Lakes Radiology had to wait with nothing able to be done in the dark.

Operations manager Cheryl O'Connell said if there had been any urgent cases, they would have been sent to the hospital.

Skyline Skyrides staff transported tourists who had taken the gondolas up the slopes of Mt Ngongotaha and back down in 4WD vehicles. Nobody was in the gondolas when the power went off. Meanwhile, Ngongotaha, Waikite Valley, Ngakuru, Reporoa and Rotoma homes still without power this morning due to power poles coming down in the wind.

Northpower and Siemens staff were working into the night last night to fix the problems but were sent home because the winds were too strong and it was too dark.

The linesmen were out at first light today.

While most of the power woes were to be fixed by midday, power was to be cut between 1pm and 3pm today to customers between Rainbow Mountain and Reporoa while a damaged power pole was replaced by a helicopter.