Dunn said the recovery effort had required a “massive response” from contractors and the Powerco team.
More than 250 field staff - not including vegetation crews, traffic management contractors and support staff - had been involved in the response across the region.
Crews had travelled from as far afield as Taranaki, Hamilton, Matamata, Tauranga and Dannevirke, working 12 to 14-hour days to carry out repairs and restore power, Dunn said.
“This has been an enormous team effort and we’re grateful for everyone’s hard work to get the power back on for customers,” he said.
The reason many properties in the area were still without power was because of tree damage, electricity network issues and the complexity of the work required to rebuild areas of power lines, a Powerco spokesperson said.
Many of the tree damage areas were in “challenging forestry blocks”.
The spokesperson said every customer in the areas has access to an alternative power supply.
“Many of the outstanding outage jobs don’t actually affect houses or people - they are connections supplying the likes of farm sheds, shearing sheds and irrigators.”
Rural Hunterville resident Fi Dalgety was without power for nearly five days but was fortunate that her daughter’s wedding occurred on February 13.
“We were lucky because my daughter got married at 3pm on the Friday beforehand and then 3pm last Friday our power came back on so we’re not sure what’s going to happen by 3pm this week,” Dalgety said.
“We had the chiller from the wedding, borrowed generators and lots of leftover food so living in our household wasn’t too bad.”
Papanui Junction School principal Susannah Revell said power was restored to the majority of student and staff properties on February 20.
Powerco has been working with Civil Defence Emergency Management to support customers who have been without power for extended periods.
Helicopters were used to access hard-to-reach areas and string lines in remote parts of the Whanganui and Rangitīkei areas, helping crews make progress where ground access was limited.
Rangitīkei Mayor Andy Watson said the majority of properties in the district without power were rural.
“There were a huge number of trees that were brought down over lines and on to roads,” Watson said.
“I can absolutely understand the frustration for people who are still without power. This was an unprecedented event in terms of damage.”
Watson praised the resilience of those affected by the outages.
“People are lending generators to other people, people with freezers where things are in danger of going off have said, ‘This is going to go off. Can you use some of this food?’ and iwi, in particular, have been very organised in that space,” Watson said.
Dunn sympathised with those still without power.
“We understand how frustrating it is to be without power and thank people for their patience and the resilience they were required to call on,” Dunn said.
Powerco said if properties without power had immediate neighbours who had power reconnected, they should log a fault with their electricity retailer or through the Powerco report an outage page.
“Immediate neighbours” does not include those on the next street or further along the same road as they may be connected to another transformer.
Powerco customers can check the major updates page on the Powerco website for more information.
Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.
