9am, 17 March 2015, Update on electricity outages, Gisborne, Wairoa, East Coast

Crews of line mechanics started work early this morning and hope to restore electricity as soon as possible to those who lost it as a result of Cyclone Pam.

Eastland Network general manager Brent Stewart says fewer than 150 homes were without power overnight.

“Many of our team members stayed on the Coast so they were able to start work at first light this morning. We hope to restore power as soon as possible, and thank people again for their patience during this time.”

Mr Stewarts said reports of isolated outages had come in throughout the day yesterday and faultmen had restored power to hundreds of customers across the Gisborne, Wairoa and East Coast districts.

“Unfortunately because of trees being blown down there were a number of rural and coastal households without power overnight,” he said.

With nearly 25,500 connections to customers throughout a large geographic region, Eastland Network has a relatively low average customer/connection density of only seven connections per kilometre.

Falling trees in Puketiti Road near Te Puia took power lines down during yesterday afternoon affecting about 20 customers, while in Lottin Point and the Waikura Valley another 50 individual customer connections were affected. Multiple tree related faults had also occurred in Tauwhareparae Road, and in Mata Road near Tokomaru Bay affecting about 25 customers in each area.

Mr Stewart asked all people in the region to continue to treat all power lines as live at all times.

“Continue to report all faults to Eastland Network’s call centre on 0800 206 207 so that we can identify the issue and send someone to make repairs.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media