Welcome Bay power cut: Cattle and tangled wires suspected cause of outage

Cattle were the suspected cause of a large power cut in Welcome Bay today.

Cattle and tangled wires are suspected to be behind a large power outage in Tauranga this morning, Powerco says.

Field crews restored power to 1074 customers in Welcome Bay by 10am this morning after they lost power at 7.37am, the power supplier said in a statement this afternoon.

“Upon investigation, two outages were discovered. One caused by tangled wires and the other is suspected to be caused by cattle rubbing against a stay wire attached to a power pole.

“Powerco thanks customers for their patience and understanding as crews worked as quickly and safely as possible to make repairs and restore power to all affected customers.”

A Welcome Bay resident described powerlines ”swinging quite violently” after the power outage.

”It was really loud. I didn’t really hear a bang. It was more than a buzz. It was more like an electrical growl,” he said.

The resident, who would not be named, was on Kaitemako Rd when he saw overhead powerlines moving shortly after the outage.

”The powerlines across the road were swinging quite violently. Even the ones that come into our place, they were swaying as well.

”I thought our meter box had fried itself.”

What to do in the event of an outage

If customers do experience an outage, they’re advised to report their outage by:

• Contacting their retailer (the company they pay their power bill to), or
• Using the report an outage form on Powerco’s website here.