Lessons from Cyclone Gabriel appear to have gone unheeded as Raglan experienced problems with its mobile coverage during Monday’s power outage.
Most worrying for community resilience was the series of problems with Spark’s service. They initially lost power to their Te Hutewai Site on Sunday and while a generator was put into action it was allowed to run out of fuel early on Monday morning. The remaining mobile sites in Raglan, Te Uku and Kawhia then lost power around 7:15am on Monday with their battery backups only lasting 1.5 hours, despite Spark stating that they should last between 4 - 8 hours. An additional generator was bought out and service was back up by 11:30am.
Spark says that they will be reviewing their power assessment at the Raglan site but this only appears to be happening because a site upgrade was already scheduled for that location.
Although 2degrees service lasted longer with users only reporting outages in the afternoon it’s clear that our cell phone network can’t be relied on for Civil Defence emergencies.
Although Raglan Community Radio was off the air overnight into Monday morning, an onsite generator had us back up early in the day.
Meantime power is back on through most of Whaingaroa after Monday’s lightning strike and bad weather cut off power to most of Whaingaroa. Continued bad weather caused delays to repairs at the strike location and other outage spots around Te Papatapu Rd and Otonga Valley.
Although the outage map is clear this morning WEL Networks said yesterday that there were 61 properties around Te Papatapu Rd that were expected to be without power overnight as they waited for specialist equipment to be bought in.
Raglan Boat Charters has announced the arrival of a new amphibious Sealegs Vessel for the new summer season. After a good season last summer with the Wahine Moe, owner Andrew Stump has branched out with a vessel called Waka Huia that can start in the carpark, drive into the harbour and head to all sorts of spots that the Wahine Moe could never make it to.
With a capacity of 11 passengers the new vessel has retractable wheels that have ABS braking and are all-wheel-drive.
After a few months off over winter the Wahine Moe is expected to be back in Service at the end of this month with Waka Huia taking its first passengers out a couple of weeks later.