Cyclone Gabrielle Update - 20/02/23
Published 20 February 2023
It has been a long week for many across Whangarei and Kaipara since Cyclone Gabrielle wrecked damage on our community.
We know it is tough for people who still don’t have power, and our teams have been working around the clock to get the power back up and running.
There are now 850 customers without power due to issues on the high voltage lines, and an estimated 1300 further customers out due to localised low voltage issues. We’ve been able to make good progress this week with over 200 people working all over the network. Additional crews from Counties Energy and Waipa Networks are joining the 200-strong field team from today. We thank these networks for their support.
We have over 1300 job tickets in the system from customers calling to let us know about outages at their place. As we start to get through the jobs that restore power to large numbers of customers and critical infrastructure we can now turn our attention to the work that affects pockets of, or individual customers.
Yesterday we continued to work in areas with extensive damage including Otaika Valley, Araphoe, Opouteke Road, Whakapirau, Pataua North and Oneriri. Today much of this work continues, including Matakohe, Batley Road, Bickerstaff Road, Stirling Road and Ovens Road, Takitu Rd, Awarua, Awaroa River Road, Pepi Road. We will progressively liven customers as we move down the lines repairing as we go.
As we work through areas that still need to be repaired, it may be necessary to turn off the power off to a wider area to undertake the repairs safely and restore power to neighbouring properties.
If you have power, and then lose it again, it will most likely be because our crews are working to restore power to smaller areas in your neighbourhood. During this restoration work we need to de-energise larger areas to enable our crews to work safely and reconnect the damaged lines. This outage should be reasonably short – often no more than 2 or 3 hours.
If your neighbours have power but you do not, please call us on 0800 10 40 40 to ensure we know about your fault.
Civil Defence are standing up support for those without power across the region, and have information available on where and how to get support on their website and Facebook.
Our website northpower.com/gabrielle has a lot of information and will be updated today with further details for each area without power.
Due to the destructive nature of the Cyclone Gabrielle storm event, we have received hundreds of reports of damaged lines and lines down. These reports are still coming in to us.
It is our top priority to visit these sites and make them safe and teams are still working across the region to do this. There is always the chance that a site may have been missed or that we do not know about it yet. We ask customers to ring us if they see lines down, to stay well clear of downed lines and treat them as if they are live.
If you see downed or very low power lines please call us on 0800 10 40 40.
We would like to thank the Northland community for their patience, and their support for our staff in the field.
All of these staff have been working long days for over a week to restore power, and they appreciate the patience and appreciation shown by the community as they focus on getting power for all.
