Hundreds of customers had to stop shopping and defer early lunch yesterday when a power cut forced the closure of some central Dunedin businesses, including two malls and the city library.
Aurora Energy confirmed 1524 consumers lost power at 11.11am and were without power for up to 90 minutes. The company was investigating the circumstances of the cable strike in York Pl by an external digging contractor.
People were stuck in lifts for 10-15 minutes in the Meridian mall and Dunedin Public Library.
Meridian mall and Golden Centre mall were affected, with retailers having to close their shops and customers being asked to leave.
Just as both cleared their buildings, after acting on information power could be out for two to three hours, the lights went on, the malls' managers said.
Meridian centre manager Michael Porter said power was out at the mall for 40 minutes but it did not reopen to the public until 12.30pm.
One man was taken to Dunedin Hospital after suffering an anxiety attack from being stuck in the mall's lift, he said.
Some customers were very impatient and agitated about the closure, which would have an economic impact on businesses, he said.
"We would normally have a capacity food court but we were sending people away empty-handed."
Golden Centre general manager Simon Eddy said it was the centre's new food court opening day and the 30-minute outage came during preparations for the lunch rush.
Centre retailer Health 2000 chose to remain open, with staff working by candlelight.
Dunedin City Council services impacted by the cut included the library, call centre, customer service agency and computer services. While power was restored to the library, it was not able to open until 2.30pm when its computer services began to come online, a council spokeswoman said .
Calls to the centre were diverted to its after-hours service and customer services were only able to do manual payments.
The council's core applications returned to full service about 4pm.
