Stunned by three power outages in a week

A fallen tree, a car crash and faulty equipment combined to cut power to about 20,000 Kapiti residents over the past week.

There have been three major outages since last weekend. The biggest, when a tree collapsed on to powerlines in Paraparaumu’s Valley Rd last Saturday night, affected 13,811 customers from Paekakariki to Paraparaumu Beach.

About half as many households were affected again on Tuesday evening when a binder, which holds the cable on top of the insulator, failed.

Then, on Thursday night, a car collided with a power pole on Reikorangi Rd, affecting some 1000 customers in the area.

Power has since been restored to all of the affected properties.

Electra chief executive Neil Simmonds said it was unusual to have three major outages in a month, let alone a week. ‘‘That’s like a third of a year’s worth of customer outage minutes,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s a big deal for us.’’

Paraparaumu residents Bill and Helen Lambert were among those affected by last Saturday’s outage.

‘‘You couldn’t see a light anywhere, except for one lighted window. They were using a candle or a torch,’’ Bill Lambert said.

His wife’s laptop charger and a transistor radio were both damaged and no longer work. It had cost $126 to have the laptop examined but it was not worth replacing, he said.

‘‘If it had damaged Helen’s computer or my computer or the TV, it would have been worthwhile putting in a claim.’’

He missed the first half of the Hurricanes’ win over the Crusaders but was thankful that the electricity had been restored by the game’s second half.

‘‘If we’d been able to watch the first half and it cut out in the second half, that would have really annoyed me.’’