| Auckland major power outage: the business continuity impacts
As reported by Continuity Central on 13th June, a power outage which started at 8.32am on 12th June and carried on into the evening meant a day’s lost business for many Auckland-based companies. Transpower, the regional power infrastructure company, reported that both the Auckland central business district and various city suburbs were impacted. The power failure occurred when overhead earth wires dropped into Transpower’s 110 kV switching equipment. High winds are thought to have caused the initial damage. The associated storm and snowfall caused other local power outages across the country. What business continuity impacts were reported? The following bullet points provide some pointers: * Emergency power not so reliable: many of the city's office towers had limited or no back-up power generation, forcing thousands of workers to pack their bags and go home. The 29-storey ASB Tower on Wyndham St was evacuated after the emergency power generator failed. Building staff evacuated the tower floor-by-floor using torches because emergency lights in the stairwells were not working. ASB spokeswoman Linley Wood said about 400 staff over 11 floors were safely evacuated from the bank's head office. Some moved to other buildings, others went home. The trading floor was out briefly but transactions transferred to another office in Albany . * Paymark Eftpos spokesman Darryl Roots said the Eftpos system stayed up during the blackout. However, businesses without power were unable to use the system and for about an hour during the morning the number of transactions nationwide dropped from the normal 35 a second to 18. * New Zealand Steel at Glenbrook, one of the biggest users of electricity in the region, was unaffected by the blackout. The steel mill generates about 60 percent of its electricity through a co-generation plan. * Hire generators gone in a hurry: generators were in hot demand at hire services stores. - Frantic business owners and householders turned up at East Tamaki Hirepool early in the morning to rent generators as the phone system was down. "We had 20 to 30 customers knocking on the door but we only had 10 generators,"said Hirepool East Tamaki assistant manager, Ronald Chand. - Dave Thrower, manager of the city branch of Hirepool, said every single one of the company's "couple of hundred generators" had been taken by 11am . - A variety of companies ranging from law firms to radio broadcasting station UMA had come in for generators, said Daniel Islip, deputy manager of the Manukau branch of Hirepool. - Mr Islip blamed the sudden rush on people not being prepared for the outage. - The most common generators being hired out were the 1.8KVA, 3KVA and 5KVA generators. The 5KVA costs $74.25 to hire for a day and is popular with construction sites. - The other major player on the generator scene, New Zealand Generator Hire, said they were too busy to comment further, but confirmed they were out of generators by lunchtime on the day of the outage. How basic services fared: FIRE Dozens of people were trapped in lifts, including nine in Westpac Towers in Albert St between floors 19 and 22. Fire Service Communications Centre switched to Mips - multiple incident procedures - to deal with the workload as fire alarms went off all over the city. Each alarm had to be treated as genuine with an engine sent to each address. Extra staff were called in to take 111 calls, of which about 100 had been received by midday. POLICE Auckland City police mobilised their district emergency management plan for the first time since the 1998 power crisis. All but two of the city's police stations lost power and had to be closed. Acting Auckland City Police District Commander Detective Superintendent Gavin Jones said police had a responsibility to maintain street safety, public safety and to attend priority one jobs. While no extra staff were called in, desk-bound staff were sent into the streets. No serious incidents were reported as a result of the power cuts. EDUCATION AUT shut its city campus, sending thousands of students home just as a week of exams began. Students sitting exams were told to lay down their pens and go home. AUT spokeswoman Sandy Eriksen said exams would be rescheduled and the university would be back to normal today. Auckland University also postponed exams. Auckland Grammar School and some primary schools sent pupils home but Auckland Girls Grammar kept going in darkened classrooms as did Avondale College . Principal Brent Lewis said staff decided the most responsible action was to keep students at school. TRANSPORT Trains stopped stranding hundreds of commuters when the automatic signalling system had to be switched over to manual. Plenty elected to walk. One woman who got off at Mt Eden and walked to Khyber Pass Rd where she hailed a taxi reported the driver waived the full fare because she didn't have enough cash. Dozens of commuters were stranded when ferry sailings were cancelled. AIRPORT Auckland Airport was able to operate throughout the storm because it has its own separate electricity generator system to keep critical systems such as runway lights and aircraft navigation going. No international flights were cancelled TRAFFIC Police described the scene at some Auckland 's intersections as lunacy when around 300 traffic lights failed just after 8.30am . TELEPHONE, INTERNET Some internet and broadband customers had problems as the power went off, sparking a flood of calls to call centres. ISP provider ihug reported its call centre had some overloading problems. COURTS People milled around outside the Auckland District Court from about 9am , two tiny electric lights flickering on the ceiling. Employees from Schindler Lifts freed one woman who became trapped in the one of the building's lifts when the power failed. Many people asked why the court did not have back-up generators. A makeshift court was set up in the foyer. Nearly 50 defendants appeared in two makeshift courtrooms in the Auckland Police Station training room in the cell block. RETAILERS Many Auckland shopkeepers count the cost: There were glum faces behind the flickering lights of Queen St shop fronts before businesses slowly returned to life after the power cut. "It's really, really bad that a big city has come to a standstill," said Glenys Davison, manager of accessories store Passion for Leather. MidCity Newsagents owner Sharad Ghule said the mall should have provided more "support" for small businesses. "Without power we can't do anything." Some retailers on Queen St had decided to take an unofficial day off because of the power cut.
•Date: 21st June 2006• Region: New Zealand • Type: Article •Topic: Power |
