The Power Outage

The Power Outage

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On the 2nd of March at roughly 11:30am the power outage started which affected large areas of the South Island. 4-5 schools had to shut down due to the power cut. The Ministry of Education even told a few schools around Selwyn to shut down because of a water outage as there was no access to water or bathrooms. Around those areas, a total of 50,000 houses were affected by this power cut.

The power outage affected many cities around the South Island such as Timaru, Nelson, Motueka, Marlborough, Kaikoura and the West Coast. Anywhere further than the Otago region was not affected. The outage affected at least 130 areas in Christchurch. Luckily, around 12:15 the power was mostly restored, but the power outage lasted longer in Kaikoura. Some say that the outage was caused by the Port Hills fires, and others say it was maintenance work. They reconfigured the network, to prevent it from happening again.

An article by Madison McCondach, Lily McCondach and Caitlyn Norriss.