Power off for 11 days

After 11 days without power following a massive storm, a West Auckland woman is finally celebrating with a hot shower.

Kasha Klee’s Kelston house was one of five throughout the region still without electricity on Saturday, due to gale-force winds that battered the city on April 10.

About 180,000 properties were affected and lines company Vector described it as the worst network damage in a decade.

Relief finally came on Saturday, when Klee’s neighbour told her there was a linesman working near their house, and by 6pm the family was overjoyed to receive word that power had been restored.

Klee said her situation became so dire, she and her partner uprooted their children, aged 3 years and 6 months, on April 13 to stay with family in Hamilton until things changed.

Their home was one of the first to lose electricity.

Klee said it lost power at 11am before the worst of the storm on Tuesday night, ‘‘so we were already powerless when the storm hit’’. The family set up extension cords from a neighbour’s property to keep the fridge cool and run a small heater.

‘‘We just trucked along for the first few days, showering at the neighbours and stuff ... but then it started to become clear that it wasn’t going to be a quick restoration. Anyone with a family would know what it’s like to have to leave your home and everything you know, and take the kids away from their toys and their space and go to a new place,’’ she said.

‘‘What made it so much worse was not knowing [when] we could return.’’

Klee said the family was excited to get back into their home and normal routines again.

On Sunday morning, Vector spokesman Iain Butler said all of the properties that had lost electricity in last Tuesday’s storm had now had their power restored.

However, some other properties that had suffered outages in the following days were still in the dark, he said.

Earlier, the company admitted its customer service systems were insufficient following widespread frustration about inaccurate restoration times showing on its app.

‘‘We haven’t had anything like this since we put in our current system of customer communication, so those systems have never been tested to this extent before,’’ a Vector spokesman said at the time.

‘‘Clearly we need to do better next time.’’