Who to blame for power outage

I’m as happy to bash Transpower as the next person when they stuff up, but in this case, it seems pretty clear most of the fault lies elsewhere according to this Herald report:

Waikato farmer Steve Meier has fought a five-year battle with Transpower. He has never made a secret of the fact he doesn’t want its workers or pylons on his land.

Yesterday, those pylons sparked a fire in a shelterbelt of trees, leading to major power disruption in Auckland and beyond. …

However, company chief executive Patrick Strange said Mr Meier was the most difficult person in the country to deal with.

Transpower finally got access to the farm last night with an armed police escort – but not before five chaotic hours. Power was down as firefighters tackled the blaze.

“We have had major difficulties with this guy,” said Dr Strange. “We do have a right to enter the property but we can’t just walk on. We have to deal with him in a legal sense.

“We have been trying to get on the land for some months. We’ve been sending him notices saying we needed to do tree-trimming … When the fire was on this afternoon and we tried to attend to it, he still blocked us and we had to basically have over 10 police, I think, on site to allow us to go on to the land.”

So Mr Meier had refused for months allowing Transpower to trim the trees (which would have prevented the fire), and then even as the fire is burning, he still refuses access, necessitating armed police.