June 12, 2006

Aucklands 2006 Power Cut

Just leaving for work (late today too) at 8:40 and the power goes out.
Still hot water. Good. Can wash my face. Im sure I paid the power bill!

In car, Policeman directs traffic at the intersection. Im now certain I paid the bill.

Got to work. No power. Sherades. Hmmm.

Had to drop a friend off at the airport at 11. Left the city at 10am, got to the airport at 11:15am. No traffic lights, no police, no-one using the give way rules. Bus drivers were very impatient, so were towies. Running low on petrol, I plunged beyond the point of no return to get to the airport. Thank goodness most of the Airports central services including a petrol station, eftpos and the terminal itself was on a backup generator.

"A message to incoming international travellers. Welcome to New Zealand. Auckland is currently experiencing a power outage, but here at the airport, we assure you it is very much, business as usual."

On the way home, I tried calling work but there was no answer, so tried the big boss - cellphone network busy. Go home then I think. Motorway at a standstill between Mt Wellington and the city, so opt to take the suburban streets, using a route with the LEAST amount of non-working traffic lights.

After a while at home, the power suddenly came back on, so decided to shoot to the supermarket. That was a great idea, as you can see by these pics.







Meat, cheese, fish, milk, icecream - anything refrigerated was written off and not for sale. At this point, I would like to offer Dave Smart this gleeful image, along with its gleeful pricetag. Drunk up buddy!

click to enlarge picture. mmmmmmm

In an interesting radio angle, Leighton Smith "corrected" a listener.
Caller says "thanks to 1ZB for all they do on days like today" to which I agree. Radio Live has some serious work to do before they can hang their hat on something like what happened next. Leighton then says, we are "Newstalk ZB. Have been for years now. We do not go by any other name, and I just needed to correct you there". He was quite blunt about it. The caller plays tennis with him and says "that shows you how good the 1ZB branding was over the years", to which Leighton gracefully bows out with "and a fine closer".

From my jap radio listening chair, when the power went out, there was nothing on the radio for a good 20 minutes between 8:40ish and 9:00, except for Times FM from Orewa, The Flea from Devonport and with much pride, Retro Hit Radio from Manukau. You see, Manukau it seems was not affected by the powercut until around 10:15 this morning. Im guessing the techs had to turn everything off at the Otahuhu power station to reinitialize circuit breakers etc, and that was the point power was cut and transmission went down. Poos. A nice thought anyway to have perhaps all of Manukau all to myself for between 20 minutes and 2 hours.

Random Song:
Ying Yang Twins feat Lil Jon - Saltshaker ogg/2Mb/2005

*pick up Ogg before June 16, 2006

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Auckland aye! ha ha

Dave Smart said...

Dang! Raspberry Coke.. You dirty tease Rich.

I'll stop in on the way home..