A power cut in central Wellington this morning took TradeMe and Stuff offline between approximately 8.40am and 10am, and also affected NZ Post and Kiwibank's websites.After a contractor "made contact with an 11kV feeder underground" causing a &q
A power cut in central Wellington this morning took TradeMe and Stuff offline between approximately 8.40am and 10am, and also affected NZ Post and Kiwibank's websites.
After a contractor "made contact with an 11kV feeder underground" causing a "loud bang," power was lost to around 4000 homes, plus various central Wellington businesses including the web host for Fairfax sites TradeMe and Stuff.
Although both sites are mirrored in Auckland, the changeover was still underway when, an hour into the outage, hosting was restored in the capital.
"The site move to Auckland was in train, then the hosting provider's back-up power systems [in Wellington] finally kicked in," TradeMe spokesman Paul Ford told NBR.
Datacom let us down
In a message posted to its website shortly after service was restored, Trade Me said: "We do have plans for back-up systems to kick in when this sort of thing happens, but our third party hosting provider let us down this morning."
Asked by NBR to name the third-party Mr Ford said it was Datacom.
Auctions extended
Around 14,000 auctions were set to close on Trade Me during the down time (8.41am to 10.05am). All have been extended by four hours, Mr Ford said.
NBR feels Stuff journalists should pledge to work an extra four hours as an equivalent gesture.
Around 4000 customers were affected by the power cut. Wellington Electricity said all service was restored by midday.
NZ Post still down
As of 10.50am, Kiwibank's website was back online, but as of 1.45pm, parent company NZ Post was still down, with this message greeting visitors:
