Power Restored for Around 2,000 Customers After Storm Devastation

Friday 14 April 2017, 10am – Solid progress has been made restoring power to the 15,000 customers who were left without power this morning followingCyclone Cook.

Unison Relationship Manager, Danny Gough said around 2,000 customers have had power restored since this morning and around 13,000 still remain without power.

“Our crews are making good progress out there. We have at least 50 staff from Hawke’s Bay and have brought in extra crews from Rotorua and Taupo to help out.

“We realise it’s a beautiful day now, but Cyclone Cook was very destructive and there’s lots of repairs and clean up to do in its wake.

“We hope to restore the bulk of customers by this evening, but we expect at this stage there will still be some customers off for longer periods, particularly in our rural areas and where we have the most damage.”

Customers advised to keep away from downed lines and not use chainsaws near powerlines

Danny said that there are reports coming through that people are getting close downed lines and some customers are operating chainsaws near powerlines.

“Please people leave it to the experts. Stay away from downed lines and treat them as live at all times.”

Unison is aware of outages affecting customers in and around the following areas:

• St George’s Road, St Andrews Road and Ada Street

• Areas of Bayview

• Bridge Pa

• Brookvale Road, Arataki Road, Joll Road, Plassey Street, Pufflet Road, Havelock North

• Ferry Road, Clive

• Elwood Road

• Haumoana

• Maraekakaho Road

• Omarunui Road, Napier

• Orchard Road and surrounds in Camberley

• Areas in and around Park Island, Napier

• Poukawa

• Twyford

• Esk Valley

• Williams Road, Hastings

Due to the large number of calls through Unison’s call centre, customers are asked check for known outages on its website: http://www.unison.co.nz/outages, follow its Facebook page and Civil Defence’s advice.

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