Covid 19 coronavirus: Residents face bleak day at home during lockdown without power

An entire rural Auckland road is facing a day under lockdown without power tomorrow due to a Vector planned outage to replace a pole.

Residents of Foley Quarry Rd, Dairy Flat, will not be able to cook or shower and those without fireplaces will not be able to heat their homes because of the work.

Amanda Van Der Nest has tried desperately to get the power company to shift the date of the repair job but the company has not budged.

Vector says the work, which will see power turned off between 8am and 5pm tomorrow, is essential and must be completed, lockdown or not.

The company reviewed the work it is doing under alert level 3 after the Prime Minister announced the shift from level 1 a couple of weeks ago.

A spokeswoman said a number of planned works were postponed however some had to go ahead despite the lockdown.

"The remaining work we assessed to be so critical that we could not delay – for safety or continuity of supply," she said.

Van Der Nest said power was shut off a few weeks ago to allow Vector to do some work but she figured they didn't get everything finished.

The mother of two children, aged 10 and 14, is working from home alongside her husband and many other Foley Quarry Rd residents.

Stuck at home during the lockdown without power would be a daunting task, but could be good for the children, Van Der Nest laughed.

"Everybody is stuck at home, got kids at home, it's crazy," she said. "I can accept it in normal situations but it's not great in this situation.

"We're not quite sure [what we will do], we're hoping we can move this date but it looks like we'll be stuck at home.

"It's not like last time where we could go out to the museum for the day; there's nowhere to go tomorrow. If it's at level 2, we could at least get out for the day."

MetService predicts Auckland will reach a high of 14 degrees tomorrow and Van Der Nest is worried about residents who rely on power to heat their homes.

Their home has a fireplace so they will be fine, however, due to the lockdown residents are not able to leave their homes to seek refuge from the cold elsewhere.

The Vector spokeswoman said the company is fully aware how reliant communities are on their power, even more so during the colder winter months.

But delaying the job, or others like it, could result in more disruptions or compromised safety which was unacceptable to the company, she said.