A possum may be to blame for a power outage that affected 8200 homes in Napier and Hastings last night.
Unison customer relations manager Danny Gough said early investigations pointed to a furry perpetrator making contact with powerlines somewhere in the Whakatu industrial area about 9pm.
Homes were without power for up
to six minutes, he said.
"It's a bit disappointing from our perspective, given all the protection we put in to stop this from happening," Mr Gough said.
"We're investigating it further today to see exactly what happened."
Last month a swan flew into powerlines in Whakatu causing 2587 Bay homes to lose power.
Mr Gough said yesterday's outage may have caused some arcing which could explain why people reported seeing flashing lights last night.
