North Shore Times (New Zealand)
Dovi slams into city, bringing chaos and power cuts
Almost 1000 homes across Auckland and Northland were still without power on Tuesday, three days after ex-tropical cyclone Dovi hit the country.
About 700 households in Auckland – mainly in the rural north and west – remained without power, Vector said on Tuesday. On Monday, about 5000 households across Auckland and 1200 in the Far North were in the dark after Cyclone Dovi swept in on Saturday evening, bringing down trees, damaging power lines and temporarily closing the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
Businesses, transport, and health sites were closed on Sunday as Dovi hit the city after travelling south from the Pacific, where it reached category four status.
Auckland Airport measured a gust of 107kmh on Sunday morning, while 115kmh was measured in Whangaparaoa. The Harbour Bridge recorded gusts above 105kmh and was closed until 2pm.
Ferries were also cancelled for about an hour, multiple Covid testing sites were closed and two moved indoors while Auckland Zoo also closed its doors.
Meanwhile, 12,500 PowerCo customers were also still in the dark on Monday in Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty.
As of Monday afternoon, about 5000 properties in Auckland – including some on Waiheke and Kawau islands – remained cut off, a Vector spokesman said.
The bulk of the outage was in the rural north of Auckland and in West Auckland.
Tens of thousands of electricity customers around the country lost power because of the storm on Sunday, leaving power companies scrambling to repair networks.
Vector general manager of operations and maintenance Marko Simunac said the focus on Monday was the restoration of the ‘‘backbone of the network’’, which was the fastest way to get power back for large numbers of households. Simunac said some households might have damage to their service line – connecting their house to the network – which was the homeowner’s responsibility: ‘‘While our crews may make some repairs to these if they are straightforward, we will not prioritise individual service lines ahead of network repairs’’.
At Auckland’s darkest point on Sunday, Vector said 50,000 customers at once were without power. Northland, Auckland, Taranaki, Bay of Plenty, Manawatū, Kapiti, and Wellington all reported outages.