Quarry blast cuts power

Far North Mayor Yvonne Sharp has slammed electricity authorities after most of the district went without power yesterday while a damaged supply line was replaced.
The power supply was threatened on Friday after flying rocks from a quarry blast, 10km east of Kaitaia, damaged Transpower's only transmission line into the district. More than 10,000 properties north of the Mangamuka Ranges were without electricity from 7am to mid-afternoon while the repairs were carried out yesterday. Homes, hospitals, emergency services, businesses and farms were all without electricity during that period.
With a day's warning, Kaitaia Hospital was able to make sure patients were given dialysis and other regular treatment early, or at Kawakawa Hospital.
Apart from widespread inconvenience, no serious effects from the outage were reported.
Mrs Sharp said she was "extremely disappointed" at what she called inadequate warning about the shut down.
"It was far too serious a situation not to have made a greater effort to give consumers more time to prepare," Mrs Sharp said. "It's not about the inconvenience, it's the potential for disaster. I'm not disputing the work was absolutely necessary but I certainly expected there would be a far higher level of communication."
Council staff and contractors had swung into action to avoid sewerage spills, water treatment failures and other problems, Mrs Sharp said. They had used sucker trucks to empty sewerage tanks to avoid spillages, hooked up alternative power to treatment plants, were ready to deliver water to 15 properties whose water supply was lost, sourced generators and had staff and civil defence services on standby.
Meanwhile, Transpower and Top Energy each claim the other was responsible for getting the message out. Transpower is responsible for the transmission of electricity; Top Energy for its distribution.
Transpower spokesman Chris Roberts said it was Top Energy's job to be the local messenger.
"We would never try to impose on a local lines company who are far better equipped than we are to make the appropriate warnings."
Mr Roberts said that within an hour of Friday's incident, Top Energy had notified police, emergency services and Kaitaia Hospital that major repairs would be scheduled for Sunday.
All radio stations in the district had broadcast bulletins and every possible effort had been made to let people know.
However, Top Energy general manager Steve James said the accident had affected a Transpower system, so it was that company's responsibility to take charge of communications.
"It was a scenario that's outside our direct responsibility, but obviously we have an interest because these people are our consumers. Naturally we want them to have the necessary information."
Mr James said regardless of any criticism the fact remained that an emergency situation had required, and received, prompt action.
"The actual incident has been very well handled. It was an absolutely unforseen circumstance that had to be dealt with. If the line had been taken out at the time of the blast the scenario would have been far worse."
Top Energy took the opportunity during yesterday's outage to carry out maintenance on its own local network, Mr James said.
All parties involved will take part in an investigation. • Repairing the Far North's single electricity transmission line will cost Transpower "tens of thousands of dollars", says spokesman Chris Roberts.
While the company knew the problem was caused by a quarry blast, Mr Roberts said, now an investigation would have to be carried out to determine the quarry's level of responsibility.
"We would prefer that third parties didn't go knocking our powerlines out. We will be discussing the issue with the quarry owners next week."
Bellingham Quarries proprietor Brian Bellingham would not comment on the blast.