Power cuts hit 1100 Whanganui properties, disrupt businesses

Two large power cuts in Whanganui impacted about 1125 properties on Sunday, causing havoc for some businesses.

A bird strike and damaged equipment caused power cuts to about 1125 properties across Whanganui on Sunday.

Parnells Cafe front-of-house manager Courtenay Bester said the outage at 10.35am could not have come at a worse time for the business.

One Sunday a month, Parnells Cafe hosts a breakfast special, but customers for all of their fully-booked tables had to be turned away because of the lack of power.

“That power cut was pretty big for us. It would have been our biggest day of the month,” Bester said.

“In the hour and 40 minutes it was down, we lost a horrific amount of trading.”

Some of their gelato, cabinet food and milk was spoiled: “It’s a long time to be without power.”

A Foodstuffs spokesperson said New World Whanganui was closed for about 90 minutes during the power cut.

“There was no stock lost, apart from a few items in the hot cabinet.”

A Powerco spokesperson said the 10.35am outage affected 619 properties in central Whanganui, College Estate and Springvale.

“Power was progressively restored to affected customers, with all supply restored by 12.34pm.”

The cause of the outage was a bird strike, which is when a bird is injured or killed as a result of it accidentally colliding with power lines.

“Live lines can kill, which is why it’s advised to treat lines as live at all times and keep people and equipment at least 4m away from overhead lines to avoid coming into contact with them,” Powerco said.

Bester said the cafe lost two hours of trading.

“We still have to pay staff, lease and all of our trading costs,” she said.

“The revenue we lost would have been huge yesterday.

“We will absolutely do it again, but we just really hope that everyone will book in then.”

The business was closed for nearly two hours, with all the food having to be reheated after power was restored.

Powerco general manager electricity Karen Frew said she empathised with the businesses that could not trade while the power was off.

“Unfortunately, we can’t plan for unplanned outages, such as birds striking lines or vehicles hitting power poles.

“We worked as quickly and safely as we could to restore supply and thank our customers for their patience and understanding as we did that.”

During a power outage, customers can get up-to-date information online from Powerco’s outage map at outages.powerco.co.nz.

She said customers could also contact their electricity retailer, the company they pay their power bill to, for power outage information.

A second outage at 5.02pm on Sunday affected 506 properties in the Bastia Hill and Durie Hill suburbs.

The cause of the second power cut was damaged equipment, the Powerco spokesperson said.

Power was restored by 7.21pm.

Eva de Jong is a reporter for the Whanganui Chronicle covering health stories and general news. She began as a reporter in 2023.