Damage from the storm to electricity networks was extensive. Photo / Wellington City Council
By Bill Hickman and Mary Argue of RNZ
Residents across the Wellington region are getting increasingly frustrated with power providers and the lines company, with one 92-year-old forced to cart buckets of water to flush the toilet.
Schools closed and power was cut to thousands when wild weather rolled across the lower North Island overnight on Sunday.
Wellington Electricity confirmed about 700 homes in Wellington were still without power on Friday morning, while Powerco said electricity was yet to be restored to 178 homes in Wairarapa and about 1500 across the Manawatū-Whanganui regions.
Both companies said the damage to the networks had been extensive and acknowledged the frustration and ongoing disruption to those who were yet to be reconnected.
Wellington Electricity said it would donate $10 to KidsCan Charitable Trust for every customer whose power would not be restored on Friday, and that it had pulled in additional resources and cancelled all planned work to do so.
In Wairarapa, 92-year-old Patrick Craddock said it took until just after midday Thursday to reconnect his and his partner Peggy’s rural property.
He said they relied on electricity to power their home’s water pumps, and were forced to carry buckets of water nearly 50m to fill the cistern of their toilet.
He said a nearby neighbour – also going without power – was ill, and he hoped their supplier would have prioritised people who were elderly, sick or disabled.
“It seems to be a bit crazy that the people who are in need most have to contact Powerco and say, ‘Please help us’. It would be useful to have a little list so that people who are sick and disabled could fill in a little form and send it to Powerco so that something happens, because when these accidents happen it’s bloody hard to deal with it.”
RNZ put that to Powerco. It said the storm had initially affected more than 25,000 properties on its network and the severity of the damage was requiring “complete rebuilds of sections of the electricity network before power can be restored”.
“Medically dependent customers can register their needs with their electricity retailer [the company they pay their power bill to].
“Being registered does not guarantee an uninterrupted power supply, especially during faults or severe weather, so customers are encouraged to have an emergency response plan and backup options in place.”
The onsite house manager for a central Wellington boarding house told RNZ he was shocked that a loose power connection – which sent sparks flying on to the street below – went unaddressed for days.
Robert Frazer said Fire and Emergency cordoned off the area on The Terrace, but as of Thursday evening the boarding house’s 15 tenants were still in the dark.
He said Wellington Electricity and his power provider had been contacted “multiple times”.
“You contact Wellington Electricity, and they say, ‘We’re not the people you should contact, you have to contact Genesis,’ our power provider.
“So then I contact Genesis ... and they say, ‘We’re not the people who actually fix it, so you need to contact Wellington Electricity,’ and so it just keeps going around like that.
“No one’s prepared to say, ‘Right, we’re the ones that are responsible, we’re coming out now.’”
Frazer said that in a city with high winds, it was disappointing contingencies were not in place.
“Do you expect us as customers to put [up] with – whenever there’s strong wind in Wellington – to be without power for days?
“If this was a really cold day in the wintertime – we’ve got no heating right now – that is really substandard.”
His power was eventually restored on Friday morning.
One of the hostel’s residents, Gareth Mackay, said the first few days were manageable but it was getting harder to deal with the longer it dragged on.
“No fridges, no cooking, we can’t even shower because the hot water’s connected to power as well. It’s not good.
“I don’t think we’re doing very well, honestly. It’s ridiculous.”
Genesis Energy was contacted for comment. A spokesperson for Wellington Electricity said customers must first contact their electricity retailer, who would then log a job.
“It’s essential that customers call their retailer in an outage. We cannot identify individual property outages unless a call is logged, and if one isn’t, we’ll assume the customer is part of a wider area outage.
“If someone spots anything they believe is an electricity hazard, they should call our emergency line on 0800 248 148. If anyone’s in danger or there’s a fire or serious risk to property, they should call 111 immediately.”
Solo mother of two Nicola Hill was still offline after she woke to find no power in her Island Bay home on Tuesday morning.
“We just don’t know when it’s going to come back on, but we’ve been told that someone has to be at the house to allow access to help to fix the problem.
“That just means that I’ve had to be at home without access to power for the last three days. Still no one’s turned up, and you don’t have any timeframes for when things are going to be resolved,” Hill said.
She said the only response to her daily attempts to contact Powershop – her supplier – and Wellington Electricity had been a text asking customers to contact Powershop if their power had come back.
She said she was frustrated, but conscious of others about the country suffering worse damage.
“I think ours are just inconveniences, but it does make me worry about our infrastructure and about how we’re going to cope with some of the climate-related storms that we’re going to expect.
“When we can’t have functioning sewerage and power restored very easily after these sort of – likely to be common – events.”
She felt power companies needed to be more proactive in bringing in extra staff and contractors, as well as establishing more reliable communication, when responding to adverse weather events.
“The system at the communication end isn’t working. You get different people and they’ve got different levels of expertise. The first person didn’t know what the second person knew.
“First of all I was told it was going to be four to six hours, [then] the next person said, ‘It’s not going to be that, it’s going to be more like 18 hours.’ Just a whole lot of really changing messages.”
A spokesperson for Powershop said they were sorry to hear that some customers were still without electricity, “although people can be affected by power cuts like this regardless of which retailer they are with”.
“Responsibility for the restoration of power sits with Wellington Electricity (just as it does with other lines companies around NZ),” they said.
Wellington Electricity said Sunday night’s winds were the strongest to hit the capital since 2013 and that it was dealing with more power cuts than expected.
It said that since then, power had been restored to about 21,000 homes. More than 60 faults affecting large areas had been fixed, as well as 1000 single-property failures.
A spokesperson said the “vast majority” of area outages were fixed within two days, but they’d been left with a “long tail of single-property” power cuts.
“We’re also not always able to immediately identify these faults, as some may be initially hidden by larger area outages. Some of these jobs have also been complex, requiring follow[-up] visits, which has affected our original timeline.”
The Wellington City Council said a major clean-up was underway after the southerly storm that ripped through the capital.
Parks and open spaces manager Bradley Schroder said the impact of the vicious winds was everywhere, with trees down all over the city, and would likely take months to clear.
The council said crews with chainsaws had been busy dealing with broken branches hanging from trees on roadsides and in the Botanic Gardens and cemeteries.
Schroder expected the 900 jobs lodged with the council to rise.
Wellington residents could dispose of green waste at the Southern Landfill for free until 5pm on Thursday, February 26. The South Wairarapa and Carterton District councils would also provide free green waste disposal this weekend.
Residents in Masterton would also be offered free disposal, but have been asked to hold on to their green waste until the disposal site – which is dealing with power issues – can accept it.
– RNZ