By John Grant
It now appears that a fork lift was the cause of the power outage which saw chaos rain on the North Shore, West Auckland and Northland this morning.
The power was lost just prior to 8am and wasn’t retored to all of the North Shore till 9.45am. In the meantime most day to day activities were significantly impacted. North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams the cut highlighted the fragility of the New Zealand network.
“You can’t be reliant on old over-head lines floating around West Auckland,” Mr Williams said.
He said ducting has been installed under the Northern Busway and the council is now waiting on Transpower. “It just literally needs the wiring put in. It’s approved and ready to go,” Mr Williams said.
Auckland Mayor described the state of the power supply as third world and that he was at the end of his tether with Transpower.
The culprit was a forklift carrying a container that knocked out the main source of power. Transpower spokesman Geoff Wishart said the main Otahuhu-Henderson line was tripped while maintenance was being carried out on the back-up line.
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