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A family of four faced a sixth night without electricity or hot water last night as power company Vector promised a full investigation into its response to the outages caused by last week's storms.
Quentin and Tracy Robinson, with daughters Kelly and Kirsty, have been having showers at
friends' and family's homes, living by candlelight and have worn nearly all their clean clothes.
Without "the blessing" of an open fire, they would have had to go to a hotel.
The power to their Silverdale home was cut at 2.20pm last Tuesday.
"It's not like we live in the middle of nowhere," Mrs Robinson said yesterday. "A day or even two we could understand and cope with, but this is the sixth day. I can't see any reason for it."
At its height, the storm knocked out power to more than 141,000 homes and businesses.
Power company Vector said last night that electricity still had not been restored to about 150 properties in "remote rural areas".
Spokesman Keith FitzPatrick said that when the power was restored Vector would "closely review our response and the robustness of the network".
But that is scant consolation to the Robinson family, whose home is a two-minute drive from the centre of Silverdale.
Mr Robinson said that although calls for help had been made repeatedly, it had been impossible to get a straight answer on when the work would be carried out.
"What should our expectations be? Six days seems an awful long time. What is reasonable?"
The family, who moved into the house in February, spent $59 on a gas camping stove to cook meals.
They had been able to stay in the house only because of the open fire and the girls, aged 9 and 11, were not at school. Neighbours John and Judith Dickson, who are in similar circumstances, have also managed to stay put.
Mr Dickson said he called Vector several times before losing count and was told yesterday the power should be back on by lunchtime today. But that didn't stop him from buying a generator.
"I'm bloody ropeable. This is like Third World service," he said.
"If we were in the backblocks we could accept this but we're in the middle of suburbia.
"This has cost us a lot of money but it's not that so much as the inconvenience."
Mrs Dickson said hygiene had "almost gone out of the window".
"Much longer and the house will be uninhabitable. We have to live day-to-day and have thrown away so much frozen stuff. Who is going to reimburse us? No one wants to take responsibility."
Vector said field crews would continue working last night and today to restore services to all customers.
Mr FitzPatrick said the storm had been an extraordinary weather event.
"The effects were felt from South Auckland to the North and we tried to prioritise our attention to where it was most needed."
The main "backbone" line had been fixed first, followed by cables controlling hot water, then localised faults on long service lines off the main network.
Mr FitzPatrick refused to talk about the Silverdale cases specifically and would also not be drawn on the question of compensation.
