❗ Disruption to fibre and copper line telecommunications services 19-20 November

Chorus has advised that a planned overnight service of the fibre cable serving the communities north of Greymouth will take place over approximately 6 hours on the night of Tuesday 19 to the morning of Wednesday 20 November 2024.

This work means up to 3500 premises from Runanga to Karamea will experience short-term service disruptions.

❗️ Impact: Fibre and copper line services will be disrupted north of Greymouth, including all areas from Runanga up to Karamea.

⏰ Date and time: Tuesday, 19th November from 11pm to 5am Wednesday, 20th November – approximately 6 hours overnight.

A map of the outage area is provided below. 🗺

🐭 Following rodent damage to the fibre cable in the region in late May, a temporary cable has been in place to continue essential telecommunications services to the community.

🛠 Chorus is now planning to replace the temporary fix with a more permanent, rodent-resistant cable.

We understand that this will cause inconvenience and apologise for the disruption.

We’re working overnight to minimise the impact on those affected.

The temporary cable will remain in place during the cutover so service can be reconnected in case of any unforeseen complications.

There's been some impressive rainfall totals and flood flows across the West Coast recently, particularly over 25-26 October and 8-12 November.

West Coast Regional Council's hydrology team was out during these events monitoring river conditions, fixing telemetry issues and gauging river flows.

The team has now completed post flood inspections to ensure monitoring sites are still operating, processed flood gauging to update rating curves (used to relate river levels to flow), and crunched the numbers to compare rainfall and flows observed with past events.

All this data is used to better inform infrastructure design, Civil Defence Emergency Management responses and flood mapping. It's also used for building datasets to monitor states and trends in rainfall and flows over time.

The photo shows a hydro team member at work on the Lower Maruia Bridge.

There's four days of sunshine now forecast for the region, so we'll see river levels drop across the region.

Happy weekend.