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Power failure brings New Zealand's largest city to standstill
February 24, 1998
Web posted at: 12:15 p.m. EST (1715 GMT)AUCKLAND, New Zealand (CNN) -- A five-day-old power blackout has shut down most of New Zealand's largest city, plunging stores into darkness, leaving food in refrigerators to rot and creating bumper-to-bumper gridlock at intersections.
All four main cables into the central city have failed, the last giving out on Friday, cutting electricity to downtown offices and more than 5,000 apartments. A backup cable is still operating but is barely strong enough to supply emergency services.
Officials at municipal power company Mercury Energy said it was unclear why the cables failed but that extreme summer temperatures may have played a part.
Power isn't likely to be restored before next week.
Auckland's normally bustling downtown business district was deserted, its hotels, restaurants, banks, shopping malls and office towers empty except for police on patrol against looters.
Trying to cope, retailers had moved their merchandise to city sidewalks, but heavy rains and gale force winds Tuesday forced them to flee indoors.
The main business district of New Zealand's largest city has been dark since Friday Business leaders estimate the cost of the blackout has already reached tens of millions of dollars. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters told Parliament the crisis could cut up to 0.2 percentage points from the nation's economic growth.
"We've got one of the most modern cities in the world being reduced to Third World status," Peters said.
City Mayor Les Mills said there was no doubt the central city was in crisis but that it was unlikely a state of emergency -- where civil defense personnel take over -- would be declared.
Municipal services were holding up and police had increased their presence on inner city streets.
Firemen had been busy dealing with overheated generators "and people doing silly things like lighting gas barbecues in their closed apartments," Mills told a news conference, adding there had on the whole been very few incidents of concern.
Public health faced no great threat and water and sewerage systems were functioning.
"But we still, in conjunction with the police particularly, do not want an influx of people back into city -- this is purely a safety issue," he said.
Some 6,000 residents, mostly apartment-dwellers, have been advised to move out.
"We don't want people killed, injured or putting their health at risk," he said.
"We are still very conscious of the fact that this is a crisis. We are planning for a further deepening of this, should, for instance, Mercury have a failure of their last line."
However, he said declaration of a civil emergency would only be considered "as a very last resort."
Power company officials say full power will not be restored to the city until at least March 8.
The government has ordered an inquiry into the crisis, including an investigation into whether Mercury had allowed services to deteriorate.
Mercury said one of the city's four supply cables should be restored by Sunday, boosting the amount of available electricity to 50 percent of normal levels. However, there was no guarantee that the final cable would not also fail.
Several business community groups called for firings at Mercury, but Gibbons said he was confident nothing could have been done to foresee the failure.
Auckland tourism spokesman Lance Bickford said most of the major city hotels were now being supplied by generators.
"But a lot of small businesses have been devastated," Bickford said.
"It is very serious, clearly. The corporate community is not staying in the major hotels because (downtown-based) business houses have closed."
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related sites:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
- Mercury Energy
- City of Auckland - official site
- New Zealand Government Online
- New Zealand Parliamentary homepage
- The Press On-Line - New Zealand News
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
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