WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Much of the northernmost part of New Zealand is without power after a transmission tower toppled over in a rural area on Thursday, with no indication when power will be fully restored to the area.
The 220-kV tower fell “unexpectedly” in a field, a spokesperson for the national grid operator, Transpower, said in a statement. It was not clear why the tower fell over.
The tower carried two separate high-capacity circuits that supplied most of the power to the remote Northland region, which has a population of 195,000. Officials suggested 180,000 people were without power, Radio New Zealand reported.
Power had been restored to some through the use of a lower-capacity network, but most of the region’s homes and businesses — more than 70,000 — were still without electricity hours after the outage, the two power companies servicing Northland told The…
