Vector is monitoring weather advice that strong winds may hit parts of Auckland over the next 24-36 hours, with the potential for gale surges, thunderstorms and localised tornadoes to cause power cuts.
As a precaution, additional response crews and storm management teams have been rostered on and are ready to respond quickly if required. 
 
Vector’s Head of Network Field Services, Marko Simunac says, “We know it’s the school holidays with lots of families at home and reliant on power for warmth and entertainment such as laptops. If the weather causes damage to power lines, we’ll aim to restore power as quickly as possible while ensuring the safety of our crews and the public. This means that we may need to remotely shut down power to that area as a public safety precaution until crews arrive on site.
 
“Although our crews are trained to work in all weather conditions and at any hour, there may be circumstances during which it is unsafe for them to begin or continue working to fix outages, for example during high winds. We also wish to remind the public to stay well away from any damaged electrical equipment and report it to our outage centre on vector.co.nz/outages.
 
“We are asking Aucklanders to do their best to prepare by following the checklist below and ensuring their devices and power banks are fully charged today.”
 
If customers experience power cuts, they should use our Outage Centre to monitor restoration progress: vector.co.nz/outages.

ENDS
 
STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO BE PREPARED
 

• Always stay away from fallen power lines or damaged electrical equipment.
• Watch out for falling tree branches as these can cause damage to power lines. 
  Avoid possible damage to electrical appliances (in the unlikely event there is a power surge when the power is restored) by switching off appliances at the wall.
• Keep a torch and spare batteries handy and ensure that you have at least one telephone that does not rely on electricity for operation. 
• Ensure that an alternate fuel is always available for cooking (e.g. gas for BBQ). 
  If you have an electric garage door, prepare how you can gain entry to the garage another way so you have access to your vehicle.
• Tie down objects on your property that may be impacted by strong winds (ie: trampolines, BBQs and BBQ covers).
• If you are on tank water please ensure you have plenty of bottled water available.
• If life or property is at risk, call 111.
• We ask the public to not approach our teams for their safety and that of our crews.