It was a day destined to be like no other. Monday, 15th May, 2006.

The day started with a jolt at 5:32am when I was woken by the sound of the entire house creaking. Rather loudly. I blame it on an earthquake centred a mere 75km from where I lay and measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale. Not a major event by many standards, but enough to put a shot of adrenalin through my system and to keep me awake the additional 75 minutes or so before it was time to arise.

It was a cold day too. Around 8 degrees celsius (that’s about 46 degrees Farenheit) with a persistent, if relatively light, rain and a steady 40-50km/h (25-30mph, 22-27kts) southerly, the wind chill from which brought the temperature down to about 1 degree celsius (34F).

So what a delight to stand on the local railway station for an additional 30 minutes than should be expected before giving up on any trains arriving. As I headed for the car with a friend, an 8-carriage train blasted through the station without stopping – confirming I had made the right choice. There weren’t even that many people standing on that train – certainly less than we normally have to contend with when the trains arrive on time. Before we made it to the car, another train (only a standard 4 carriages) swept through without stopping.

The drive in wasn’t too bad for that time of morning. Taking us around half an hour for a journey that takes about half that time on a weekend. But it was stop-start and it was raining. At least we were warm and dry.

The work day went as is usual of late. Frustrating in the extreme. Not unusual, but not contributing to the general mood of the day in a positive way either.

So I left the office to head home. I gave a colleague a lift and we had a good run. After dropping him off at his car, I headed for home about 2 minutes away. I arrived just before 6pm. Just early enough to get dinner out of the way before the next event!

We were sat in front of the TV, just having finished dinner and were discussing how much TV we would watch as there were some other jobs to do. Very shortly after such a decision was made something odd happened, at 6:32pm.

The lounge lights dimmed to about half brightness. Now these lights are on a dimmer switch and have been known to misbehave. Usually a few swirls of the dimmer knob will set things back to normal. Just as I was about to do this my sons, who were in an adjacent room, said “Why did the lights just go dim?”. The lights in that room were also dimmed.
Realising the problem was not isolated to the lounge and its dodgy switch I poked my head out the door and noted that the kitchen lights were similarly dimmed. Now these were the first lights I looked at that aren’t on a dimmer switch, so about then it sank in. The electrical supply in the house was not running at full steam!

An interesting point to note here. The TV and a computer continued to function just fine, but I quickly decided that would be because most eletronic gear these days is designed to run on 110 or 240 volts so a drop in the supply voltage, so long as it remained above 110 (our standard is 240) would not cause problems. I decided to turn them all off anyway. A good decision it proved too.

Another interesting point was that the energy saver bulbs we have in the hallway continued to function perfectly during this oddity. I imagine they have a tolerance to the amount of juice they get. They are, after all, essentially fluorescent lamps.

Anyway, about 10 minutes after the lights dimmed and we had had a call from friends down the road and spotted the neighbours’ lights similarly dimmed. ‘POOF’. The juice went completely.

Now around this time we had also become aware of local burglar alarms going off and the local volunteer fire service’s call-out siren had also sounded. Further, we could see a fire appliance just down the road and a lot of smoke! Having grabbed a selection of torches for the family, I headed downstairs to retrieve my scanner and set it to scan the emergency frequencies. It wasn’t long before the situation revealed itself in the radio chatter.

A street-side transformer had exploded! I don’t think it exploded in the sense that bits went flying, but there was certainly a hell of a lot of smoke and the firemen were obviously treating it with respect! And so began our evening’s entertainment. Soon after the power totally cut we went down into our front ‘conservatory’ from where we had a reasonable view of proceedings. We watched the firemen with their hoses and foam, we watched countless cars come up a side street only to discover they could go no further – even watched a few neighbours trying to drive to the shops or wherever and discover they were stuck in our little end of the street.

The fire service declared to their control centre that the fire was extinguished at about 8pm and they spent the next hour cooling down the transformer. Now, the power company had arrived very early in the piece and had isolated the transformer and were waiting around to assist as necessary. During the hour of cooling a couple of vans arrived which obviously had the people and the gear to replace the transformer, however the 30 minutes from 9pm to 9:30pm were essentially wasted whilst everyone waited for the Regional Council Pollution Response Unit to show up and deal with the foam and the expended transformer. Once they arrived, however, they got right to work, the fire service left and we went to bed.

I was still awake at 10:22pm when the lights came on again. Two short flashes before coming on steady. I got up and checked the lights and appliances around he house and went back to bed, set the bedside clock and I guess fell asleep within about 20 minutes or so. I woke at 2am to see the clock flashing again, indicating the power had cut again and returned at about 11:20pm.

And so ended a long day that was like no other.

As I write this on Tuesday night, I can add that the power cut again briefly today and I see as I drove home from the station that there had obviously been some additional work done on the replacement transformer during the day. I also spoke to colleagues from other parts of the area and they variously reported 20 minute to 1 hour power cuts.
All in all it was a roughly 4 hour power cut for us which, considering the circumstances, I am pretty pleased with in terms of the various services dealing with the problem. Consider, also, that this is probably the only power cut we have experienced in the last 2 years.

P.S. Looks like others had a bad day too.