1998 Auckland electricity crisis
The 1998 Auckland power crisis was a five-week blackout in the central business district of Auckland , New Zealand .
At the beginning of 1998, downtown Auckland was powered by Mercury Energy using just four high-voltage cables . Two of them were 40 year old oil cables . One of these lines failed on January 20, probably due to the unusually hot and dry weather (midsummer in the southern hemisphere), another on February 9. The two remaining lines were increasingly stressed by the failures and finally failed on February 19 and 20. So practically the entire city center had no electricity.
The Queen Street was nearly extinct in the early days, as few shops were open. Some took their wares out into the streets for sale, but heavy rain during the first week prevented this escape. Generators were brought in from all over the country to provide electricity to important businesses and businesses. The noise from the generators on Queen Street put off customers. It is estimated that the blackout cost downtown merchants at least NZD 60,000 a week.
The event became an international media spectacle. The facts were often exaggerated or embellished abroad, so that the impression was created that the entire city or even the entire island was without electricity.
It took five weeks before an above-ground emergency cable supplied the city center with electricity again. During the blackout, most of the 74,000 employees in the affected district worked from home or in off-site offices in the suburbs. Some companies relocated their employees to other cities in New Zealand or even to Australia. Most of the 6,000 residents had to look for other accommodation.