Hamilton and Wellington feel sting as storm moves on

Power had been restored yesterday to all but a few of the thousands of customers affected by Tuesday's storm in the top half of the North Island.

Auckland energy supplier Vector said all its affected customers had their power restored by the afternoon. Powerco had reconnected most of its customers in the Coromandel, Thames Valley and Tauranga area.

Powerco network operations manager Ross Dixon said gales and flooding caused outages affecting 22,000 customers since Tuesday morning.

Supply had been restored to "all but a few customers" by yesterday afternoon, and he expected the rest to be reconnected last night.

Mr Dixon said residents had been extremely understanding while staff tried to reconnect the lines.

"Throughout it all, the customers have remained supportive and we appreciate their patience and goodwill."

The last affected Vector customers, in Warkworth, 69km north of Auckland city centre, had their power back by 3pm.

"At the height of the storm yesterday we had 30,000 customers without power," Vector communications manager Denise Bailey told NZPA.

Emergency services were much less busy yesterday in the top half of the North Island, though torrential rain about 2pm caused problems in the western Hamilton suburb of Dinsdale.

"We had a flurry of calls for about two hours from then," said Fire Service spokesman Jaron Phillips.

"There was quite severe flooding in a Salvation Army shop in Dinsdale, and in another place our team had to cut some holes in the roof to stop the water pressure on it."

A Wellington Free Ambulance vehicle ended up on its roof after a collision during heavy rain that stretched emergency services.

No one was injured in the crash, which happened during a downpour that hit the Wellington region mid-afternoon as a front associated with a southerly change moved over the area.

A crash between two vehicles on State Highway 2 near Horokiwi caused a queue several kilometres long for traffic heading out of the city to the Hutt Valley. Crashes on the SH1 motorway caused congestion on the main route north out of the city.

Wellington Free Ambulance general manager Marty Smyth said two paramedics were in the vehicle, which went through an intersection just after the lights had turned red travelling about 5km/h, which was normal operating practice.

All vehicles that had the green light remained stationary except for one car coming up an inside lane.

The driver tried to stop but clipped the back of the ambulance, "enough to 360 [degree] spin it and tip it over onto its roof".

The paramedics were uninjured and were able to climb out of their vehicle. They stayed on at work, said Mr Smyth.

The car driver was also uninjured.

- NZPA