Source: Radio New Zealand
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
A major power cut at a boutique hotel has thrown families and businesses into darkness on Wellington’s Cuba Street.
Residents of The Wellington Apartments are entering their third day without full power, after a failure at neighbouring Naumi Hotel.
The section of Cuba Street, which houses the hotel, apartments, as well as several shops and a restaurant, lost power on Sunday night.
What caused the failure at the Naumi Hotel – a boutique chain with head offices in Singapore – is yet to be identified, but the outage is expected to last until at least Thursday.
The hotel apologised to those caught up in the power cut and said it was working to get things back-up-and-running and was regularly communicating to those affected.
Naumi Hotel group director of marketing Lynn Poh told RNZ on Tuesday afternoon a generator had been installed to restore hot water and maintain emergency lighting and fire safety to the hotel and The Wellington Apartments, which RNZ understood contained a mix of residents and hotel guests across more than 100 units.
“There are no health and safety risks to residents in The Wellington Apartments,” she said.
But a resident – who RNZ agreed not to name – said communication about the power cut had been woeful, with families left literally and figuratively in the dark.
They said the lack of lighting in the hallways and stairwells also presented a health and safety risk, with emergency lighting only on the ground floor, and in the stairwells up to level three of the eight-level complex.
“The rest of the time, you are in darkness. If there’s another emergency on top of what we’re already experiencing – it would be a disaster waiting to happen.”
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The resident said the first sign of trouble came with an outage at 8.30am on Sunday.
“[The power] did come back on at 1pm… and then at 8pm that night it went off again. It was restored maybe two hours later, briefly, for a second and then we all heard a big bang.”
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
They said communication had been piecemeal, with owner-occupiers informing tenants about what was going on during spontaneous gatherings in the lobby near a working power socket.
As of Tuesday – 36 hours without power – they said there had been no written communication dropped at residents’ doors or posted to the complex’s communal notice board.
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They had arranged to stay at a friend’s place for the rest of the week, but said many people had no idea when power would be restored and they were concerned about elderly residents and those less able-bodied.
“The major thing is just the lack of communication, the lack of information that will help us make good decisions.
“Some of our vulnerable residents should have just been moved somewhere else. Because you can’t stay in there all day, you do need to come out, to charge up, to eat, to have a hot shower.
“They don’t understand that people’s lives are being impacted and that they have a responsibility to give us some kind of messaging or information.”
Poh said the hotel was in daily communication with apartment owners and would remind them to pass updates onto tenants.
She believed communication such as letter drops or updates on the noticeboard was being arranged, and the team was working hard to keep hotel guests comfortable.
Poh said investigations into the cause of the failure were ongoing, but in the meantime a new circuit breaker had been ordered and shipped to New Zealand.
“We are expecting power to be up by this Friday, and we’re trying to expedite for this Thursday.”
She said additional generators to restore power more widely was not an option due to the fire risk.
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Kāinga Ora tenants are among those living in the apartments.
The social housing agency’s Greater Wellington regional director Sarah Willson said it was only made aware of the situation on Tuesday afternoon.
“Since we found out about the issue, we have contacted our seven tenants to see if the power outage has affected them, and what support we can offer as their landlord,” she said.
“We will continue to check in with them regularly until the power is restored.”
By Tuesday afternoon, power had been restored to businesses on the street level, who had scrambled to keep stock cold and money coming in since the outage on Sunday night.
One store told RNZ they suspected the cost to be in the tens of thousands, accounting for lost stock and the inability to process cashless transactions, as well as reputational damage.
Anne, who was in the last two weeks of running textile bookstore Minerva said the loss of power during the closing down sale was hugely disruptive.
“Someone has kindly leant me a mobile EFTPOS… but people have to look at the shelves with their cellphone torches on.”
She said information had not been forthcoming and she had to continually seek updates.
“It’s been very hard to get information at all, there’s been nothing sent out. You just come to work day after day and there’s just no power.”
Restaurateur Steve Logan – co-owner of Liberty and Logan Brown – said power was back on at Liberty around 2pm on Tuesday and staff were scrambling to open for dinner that night.
He said it had been stressful, but with cold storage available at Logan Brown, the main cost was the “to-ing and fro-ing” of produce rather than lost stock – unlike the superette.
“I feel really sorry for our neighbours in the dairy.”
Poh said Naumi Hotel was looking into compensation, and that it was “very sorry” for the outage.
“But we are doing whatever we can as a group to minimise the inconvenience and make sure that we get power up as soon as we can. We are doing our best.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
