Cyclone Gabrielle Update - Wednesday 4pm
Published 15 February 2023
It was a welcome relief to wake up to settled weather which is now allowing us to move on to begin repair and construction work on the catastrophic damage caused by cyclone Gabrielle.
The teams made great progress yesterday and throughout the night getting more people connected. This morning we had 15,000 customers without power (about a quarter of our network), which was down from a peak of 30,000 on Tuesday morning.
Crews are out across the network with a focus on restoring power to key substation sites that power the lines to homes and businesses. Once power is restored to each substation site, crews will start to progressively work repairing faults down the lines. This means if you are at the end of a line, you may have longer outages.
There are still flooding and access issues that are causing problems, and this will hamper restoration in these areas.
Our key focus areas today have been:
- Ruawai – Because of the extensive damage on the lines feeding the substation, we are working on improving back-feeding to get as many people on as possible by fixing the critical back feed lines and installing a generator to enable more people to be powered from the substation. However, there will be extended outages for some people powered from here.
- Crews are working around Maungatapere, Hikurangi, Dargaville, Paparoa, and Mareretu, to start to repair and reduce the area of the outages. We expect to have power on to Paparoa township tonight. We are still experiencing access issues in Hikurangi and Dargaville due to flooding.
- Slips in the Ngunguru and Tutukaka coast are causing access issues, but we are out there today scoping and repairing what we can. A helicopter patrol over the area today highlighted further damage on the line that feeds the Ngunguru substation, and it is at risk of failing at any time. We need to take the line out to urgently fix it before it causes another power outage. Access is difficult and we are mobilising heavy machinery to help us access the poles. A four-hour outage will be required to complete this work when we gain access – either late this afternoon or early Thursday morning.
- Work continued today in Onerahi, Pataua South and Ruakaka. We expect to make substantial progress livening more customers in this area by this evening.
We are acutely aware that many customers will have power out due to faults on the low voltage lines or equipment like pole or ground-mounted transformers and fuses that connect properties. Until the high voltage lines are livened, we often cannot identify these issues properly, but we will get to these after the high voltage restorations.
If power has been restored to your neighbourhood but you do not have power, please call our call centre on 0800 10 40 40 to ensure we know about your fault.
New information is available on northpower.com/status where you will find area of current issues and our current best estimate of how long power will be out for.
Our restoration priorities balance important welfare and critical infrastructure needs, including focussing on areas that have critical health service, critical infrastructure (including cellular sites), town centres to provide welfare services, rest homes, schools, and dairy farms (animal welfare).
Check your area status
If you have damage to your service line (the line on your property) you may be able to get a contractor to help you. A list of approved contractors is available at northpower.com/gabrielle. If you have damage to your switchboard your electrician will be able to help.
Gabrielle updates
