| 1998 Auckland Power Crisis |
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At the beginning of 1998, almost all of downtown Auckland received electricity from the supplier Mercury Energy via only four Power Cable s, two of them 40-year old gas-filled cables past their replacement date. One of the cables failed on 20 January , possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, another on 9 February , and due to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, the remaining two failed on 19 and 20 February , leaving the central business district (except parts of a few streets) without power. Queen Street was almost deserted for the first few days, as few businesses could operate. Some brought goods out onto the street to sell, but heavy rain in the first week made that impractical. Generators were brought in from around the country to power essential services and some businesses. These made Queen Street a very noisy place and thus deterred customers. Businesses estimated that the outage cost them at least NZD 60,000 per week. The event became an international media spectacle. The story often was exaggerated (or embellished) when it was reported overseas, giving the impression most of the city or even the entire island was without electricity. It took five weeks before an emergency overhead cable was completed to restore the power supply to the Central Business District. For much of that time, about 60,000 of the 74,000 people who worked in the area in 1998 worked from home, or from relocated offices in the suburbs. Some businesses relocated staff to other New Zealand cities, or even to Australia. Most of the 6,000 apartment dwellers in the area had to find alternative accommodation. EXTERNAL LINKS
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