Mornington Superette owner Ila Patel surveys the damage caused by the powercut. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
A Wellington shop owner will likely have to throw out products and is borrowing electricity from her neighbours to keep freezers running, after being without power for four days.
Eight thousand homes had no electricity, after the strongest winds in more than a decade hit the capital on Thursday, triggering a rare red wind warning.
Wellington Electricity chief executive Greg Skelton said the organisation hoped to restore power to all homes over the next two days.
Mornington Superette owner Ila Patel, told RNZ that their Brooklyn shop had been without power since Thursday night.
Patel said she walked into the store on Friday and there was no electricity, so they had to hook some of their freezers up to their neighbour's power supply through extension cords.
She said they called a local electrician in a bid to solve the issue, but they were informed Wellington Electricity were responsible to fix it.
Patel said her husband had been on the phone to Wellington Electricity each day since the power had been out, but there had been no solution.
"It's really bad."
Many of the ice creams in her shop's supply had melted, due to the outage on Thursday night, and some will have to be thrown out.
Annemarie Hurley's flatmates hired a generator to get them through the weekend. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Annemarie Hurley's seven-person flat also no power since Thursday, although it was switched on early Monday afternoon.
Hurley told RNZ the period without power was tough.
"We were lucky enough that my partner rented a generator for us, so we were able to power at least the fridges and charge our phones."
She said the generator cost $180 for a weekend, which she described as a deal.
"It would have been about 500 without."
Dealing with Wellington Electricity had been a very frustrating experience, she said. They had called Wellington Electricity on Thursday, Friday and Monday.
Mornington Superette relied on neighbours to keep their freezers powered. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
She said, in future, it would be better to get good timeframes for when power would be fixed.
"We just sort of got, 'It will get fixed when it gets fixed' and that's fine if it's for something small, but it was really cold and there's seven of us in the house."
Utility Disputes commissioner Neil Mallon told Midday Report he expected retailers and electricity distributers to keep customers informed on what they were doing during outages.
He said lines company worked really hard to get power restored as fast as possible and he encouraged people affected in the Wellington storm to contact Utility Disputes with their problems.
Skelton told Morning Report he believed the company's response had been fantastic.
He said they could not get workers to fix the power lines in 160kph winds, so they had to sequence the work.
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