By Jerram Watts and 3news.co.nz staff
It has been officially confirmed that power has been fully restored to Auckland and affected areas. Transpower CEO Dr Patrick Strange told 3 News hot water outages will continue to be experienced, possibly as late as tomorrow.
“Too little, too late”.
Disgruntled farmer Steve Meier has slammed Transpower for not dealing with sagging power lines and tall tress on his property that caused today’s power cuts.
The cut to the national grid occurred around 4.30pm today when power lines connected with trees on Mr Meier’s property in Matangi, southeast of Hamilton, sparking a fire.
The cut coincided with Otahuhu Power Station being out of operation for maintenance.
Thousands were affected from Huntly through to Wellsford for hours as Transpower workers attempted to gain access to Mr Meier’s property to fix the damage.
Transpower chief executive Dr Patrick Strange told Campbell Live his staff attempted to access the property to fix the damage, but were barred by Mr Meier.
Around ten police officers attended the scene in order for workers to gain access to fix the problem, Dr Strange said.
It is a relationship that has been strained for some time.
“We’ve been having a hard relationship with Mr Meier, probably the most difficult in the country,” he says.
“We have been trying to get on the land for some months, we’ve been sending in notices saying we need to do tree trimming – he has blocked us.
Dr Strange also said Transpower was in talks with Mr Meier’s solicitor – as late as this afternoon – to get onto the land.
“The solicitor said, ‘I’ve tried, but I can’t help you anymore; I think Mr Meier is out of control.’”
However, an exasperated Mr Meier told Campbell Live the problem is Transpower’s, and it has been going on too long.
“What happened today, after we told them five months ago was going to happen – and only a matter of four weeks ago – that their line was going to ignite our tree.
“They should have pruned the trees 18 months ago, two years ago, three years ago,” he said.
“I told my lawyer to tell the national lines manager that this was an accident waiting to happen.
“They've had years to deal to this, but they would rather see us lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, and walk broken arsed out of our farm.”
When asked if he had a message for Transpower, he was very clear.
“Too little, too late! Why did you not do your sums years ago and see what your incompetence leads to?”
Dr Strange says the incident was “unfortunate”, but Transpower can never guarantee cuts won’t happen.
“But we have been very open and very honest about it,” he told Campbell Live.
“We have a major infrastructure rebuild going on. In the early 2000s upgrades didn’t occur. We’ve got $800 million in the Waikato line, $100 million in Otahuhu - $2 billion worth of projects are going into Auckland – you cannot fix it overnight.”
Auckland Mayor John Banks was critical of Transpower on Campbell Live.
“What we are talking about is institutional arrogance,” he said.
“We have heard a lot of ‘humbug’ and a lot of excuses. How can it happen… that a power failure in Hamilton chops out a big chunk of Auckland and causes so much economic damage and hardship for people?
Mr Banks says he has told Dr Strange for many years now that a disaster was going to happen.
“This is not the end, this is only the beginning. What we have witnessed is a lack of funding by previous governments and a lack of courage by Transpower of organising priorities and getting on with the job.”
Dr Strange says Mr Banks needs to get “more supportive” and that Mr Banks has been “very well briefed” that the supply to Auckland is stretched.
Mr Banks said he wasn’t “politicking” when he was going to stand up “for the good people of [this city].”
The outage caused major problems in Auckland today; traffic lights were affected and the police responded by deploying available staff to major intersections.
Transpower declared a grid emergency, which meant Vector had to implement rolling outages to prevent a longer lasting outage.
Northpower also had to reduce the load on lines, disconnecting some customers temporarily.
Transpower concentrated on retaining power for central services like water, sewage, hospitals and airports.
Twitter users in Newton, West Auckland, Point Chevalier, Morningside and Manurewa said they have not been affected by the cut.
Did the power go out in your area? TXT what happened to 559: TXT "news" then add a space, then your message
Replies from TXTers:
"Our power was out this morning for maintenance, now its out again. All our food is going off."
"We have been without power in Mt Eden since about 4.30pm."
"Plenty of power in Stanmore Bay. Transpower must construct additional pylons."
3 News