Vince Cocurullo: Whangarei District Mayor on the consequences of the significant power outage in Northland

Someone will be paying the price for last week's power outage in Northland. 

A pylon toppled over on Thursday after too many nuts were removed from the legs, letting it tip over. 

Transpower says it's an inconceivable and unprecedented situation, and consumers can apply for compensation through their retailer.  

Whangarei District Mayor Vince Cocurullo told Mike Hosking that they will need to wait until the incident is fully looked into. 

He says they need to know who's liable for the insurance claims. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pasca.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
It was indeed as comedic as we had feared. If
you take a lot of bolts out of something that
is anchored to the ground, it will probably fall over.
This particular Northland power cock up was the fault of
contractor a maxim there incompetence cross the region. Somewhere between
sixty and eighty million dollars fung the redistrict Mayor Vince
Cocarillos with us. Vince morning to you. Hard to believe
we didn't want this is a comedy, isn't it. I mean,

(00:21):
you can't make the stuff up.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
It does become quite humorous if you ever look at
it that way.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yes, what are you going to do about the sixty
to eighty? Is there any way of getting that back?
I mean I was affected personally and maybe I don't
know what I would have lost twenty bucks or something,
so I'm not going to be bothered, and I suspect
most people are the same. Is there some way round
this or not?

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Look, I was one of one of the questions went
through a trends of our last or last week and
also this week with the business community. We've had a
couple of businesses, well, one in particular now on Juper
initial lilit it and they lost between four hundred and
five hundred thousand dollars. So yeah, it's the bigger guys,

(01:04):
or just say the big companies. Sometimes they can wear it,
sometimes they can't, and in this situation, it's probably to
a point where they probably can't and a lot of
them are in that space. So Transpower basically said, you know,
we're going to have to take the brunt of this. However,
you've got to go through your own insurance company at

(01:25):
this present moment. So not all waiting to hear is
what is actually finding because I know that they've come
out and said, hey, it's the bolts coming out. However
the actual investigation onto on top of that will actually
come out and say, okay, where does where the insurance
companies go to when they try to make a claim.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, that'll be the company. That'll be the company that
employs the people who take the bolts out. Whyn't it
given that the people who take the bolts out made
the mistake and that's really obvious, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, I don't want to throw assumptions out there just
at the moment. I prefer to make sure we get
everything right first.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
But you talk about whether they can wear it or not.
They shouldn't have to where when there's this sort of
idiocy about the place, somebody needs to pay the price,
don't they.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, Look, it could be other sides for the story
as well. For example, I.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Mean in its came along and took bolts out of
the bloody thing and it fell over.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yes, Mike, but who was supervising?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh, for God's sake, somebody in charge. I mean, it's
all it's it's the people from the company that did it.
It doesn't matter who's supervising them. If you've got a
contract to maintain a tower and you go along take
the bolts out and the tower falls over, it's on you, right.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
So let's let's say you've got a young apprentices there
and he's been told to do a job. Now he
hasn't been supervised, he hasn't been looked after. There could
be whole pose scenarios that we don't know about.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Okay, so you know, duing compensation, en nottments, or do
you want to give the guy.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Look, look, the big thing is the contractors need to
take responsible. Absolutely, Transpout needs to take responsibility. For it
as well, and then they are. So what we've got
is we've got the wholeful of businesses that need to.
Some of them need to have compensations. Some of them,
you know, as you said, you know, twee dollars for yourself,
they don't. They don't need to. I do know that
some of the businesses in Sugata and Northland were actually okay,

(03:17):
some of them were not, and quite a few of
them were not. Should I actually say so those are
the ones that really do need to get some sort
of compensation. Some of them have got insurances and some
of their insurance packages will not cover no should but.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I mean the moment you claim on your insurance, your
premium goes up next to you, why are you putting
your premium up because some dick with a span it
went along and took too many nuts or bolts out.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
And that's exactly right. So it's what we need to
find out is we've come up with them saying the
bolts have come out, the contracts take and done that. Fine. Sweet.
Now they're doing their own report to cover over who
actually takes the liability of it. And that's that's more
the bigger issue because we need to find out who
actually takes liability so the insurances can actually make claim
or actually so the businesses can actually make claims. Those

(04:00):
companies because Transpower, I know, North Power and top Enterity,
they worked out of the way to get Norton back
up and run again, and I know Victor did that
down in Auckland as well. Just keep them going. We're very,
very thankful that we had NASA up there which was
actually able to keep Morton going. If we'd had the
fast tracking in place, we would have had a battery

(04:21):
back down at Marston Point that would have also helped
out the situation. So the whole pile of things that
could have happened if we'd happened in the place, now
we haven't. So we're going to take.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Another learning, isn't it, I guess? But so I always
enjoy having you on the program. Appreciate very much. Vince Cocilla,
who's the funger Ray District mayor Christine Rank And there's
another firecracker coming shortly. Stand by fourteen minutes past seven

Speaker 1 (04:46):
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