Letter of the week
This week's winner is Ian Smith, of Waverley, for his letter predicting a huge bill is likely for replacing the city's many deteriorated power poles. Ian receives a copy of Autumn, by Ali Smith. The winning letter was published on Wednesday.
How timely is the warning by Richard Healey regarding the state of Aurora's power poles (ODT, 21.10.16).
In the 1950s, such concerns, in a similarly run-down environment, were part of my employment (in a rather junior way, befitting my status at the time); one of my duties being an occasional inspection of the bases of hardwood poles considered ``at-risk'' in the old Otago Electric Power Board area.Such hardwood poles, consisting as they did, of sapwood and heartwood, had to be carefully assessed, which consisted of chipping the sapwood where each pole entered the ground, back to the ``heartwood'' with a small tomahawk and measuring the circumference of what healthy timber remained.
A series of calculations, which took into account many factors including ``windage'' and snow-loading, then determined the future status of the pole in question.
Recently, I came upon two young men with a tape measure assessing the pole outside our property. Despite the obvious loss of sapwood at ground level, the measurements were being taken at a height of approximately 1m above the ground, which in that case, and all others, would have been a totally useless indication of the pole's suitability for its job. Why? Because not measuring the pole's circumference at the critical point which mattered could only rely on blanket assumptions, or at best, ``guesstimations'' of the true condition of the pole.
If that method has been applied universally around the city and further afield, I would say that Richard Healey's assessment of the state of the Aurora network might well be light to the extent of several orders of magnitude. That will lead to massive expense for the city. Now, it seems, the day of reckoning is at hand.
Ian Smith
Waverley
