BY JAMES ROBB
AUCKLAND, New Zealand - The central business district (CBD) of this city of 1 million people was left without electric power on February 20, after the last of four 110 kilovolt (kV) cables bringing power into the city center failed. It was more than two weeks before one cable was repaired, restoring a limited power supply. Full power is not expected to be restored until April. Auckland is New Zealand's largest city, and the CBD is the nation's commercial capital.

The four cables failed one after the other, beginning January 22. Only one 22kV reserve cable was left operational. With the reserve cable diverted to emergency services, such as Auckland Hospital, and to water supply and sewage facilities, many businesses and services were forced to close or to relocate.

Ships were diverted to other ports. The University of Auckland and the Auckland Institute of Technology both closed for a week, affecting more than 30,000 staff and students, as did several inner-city schools. Many central city hotels closed, though most reopened using diesel generators. A senior doctor at Auckland Hospital reported that lives were put at risk after emergency generators failed to kick in when power was cut to operating rooms.

Tens of thousands of people were turned away from work on the morning of February 23, as businesses that struggled to open lost power and were forced to shut. Hundreds of temporary office workers, cleaners, and retail shop workers were laid off.

Computer systems based in the CBD crashed, disrupting commercial transactions throughout the Auckland region and even nationally, including real estate sales, the processing of social welfare benefits, and some hire purchase payments. Banking was largely unaffected, except within the CBD itself.

Mass reinforcements of police were rushed to the CBD to patrol the darkened city. For a few days, the CBD was largely deserted, except for large numbers of police and private security guards. However, the crime and chaos anticipated by authorities never eventuated, and instead many instances of cooperation among those affected by the blackout were noted.

As the costs of the collapse mounted into hundreds of millions of dollars, the electricity utility responsible for Auckland's supply, Mercury Energy, denied that it was at fault. "It's the most incredible, freakish bit of bad luck you could ever imagine," said Jim Macaulay, the chairman of Mercury Energy. Company officials speculated that an unusually hot summer associated with the El Niņo weather pattern might have caused the cables to fail. This response was met with widespread skepticism.

John Collinge, the former chairman of Mercury's predecessor, the Auckland Electric Power Board (AEPB), who was dumped in 1992 because he opposed privatization of the utility, condemned Mercury's refusal to take responsibility for the crisis. He said Mercury had laid off cable jointers who had experience in finding and mending faults. Collinge said it was well-known that the age of the cables, additional ground heat in a hot summer, and extra loading from increasing demand would put them under enormous pressure. "Instead, the company is preoccupied with takeovers," he said.

"The fact that the workforce has halved from 1,200 in 1992-1993 makes it almost impossible for them to say lack of maintenance has not contributed to the problem," he added. Collinge is a former president of the National Party, the ruling party in the coalition government. He served as New Zealand's High Commissioner to London from 1994-97.

Mercury Energy itself had predicted in March 1996 that because of growing demands for power in the CBD, the existing cables would not be able to cope beyond the end of 1997. This followed a near-breakdown in December 1995, when three of the four cables had failed.

In fact, work had already begun on a new tunnel to carry power cables to replace the four that failed. The tunnel project, which began in May 1997, has itself been plagued with problems. In January this year a worker was killed when a locomotive derailed and pinned him against a wall. Two weeks later another worker was paralyzed after a part of the tunnel collapsed on him. The injured worker, a qualified mines inspector with 30 years' mining experience, publicly criticized slack safety procedures on the project.

Others have pointed to the recent restructuring of the electricity industry as a major factor in the blackout debacle. Until 1992 electricity distribution was a nationalized industry, run locally by publicly elected boards. Since the partial privatization, the price of electricity to domestic consumers has increased, while the price paid by industrial and commercial users has gone down.

The formation of Mercury Energy with a corporate structure was the first step towards an eventual privatization. In recent months, Mercury has been engaged in a protracted takeover bid for a neighboring utility, Power New Zealand, in legal wrangles over wholesale pricing of electricity with Transpower, the corporation set up to operate the national electrical grid, and in acquiring its own electrical generating facilities.

The government announced that it would continue its plans to privatize the whole electricity industry, along with other elements of the economic infrastructure, such as roads and water supplies. The impact of Auckland's electricity blackout on the economy comes on top of the fallout effects of the Asian currency crisis and a drought hitting large parts of the rural economy.

James Robb is a member of the Meat Workers Union in Auckland.  
 
 
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