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How the lights came back on in Christchurch

February 21, 2014
It was early afternoon on February 22, 2011, when news that Christchurch had been hit by a massive earthquake reached Stuart Kilduff. The operations manager for energy provider Orion New Zealand, Kilduff was attending an emergency services conference in Wellington, 440 km away from where the tragedy was unfolding.
“The place was full of emergency services people, civil defence, army, you name it,” he recalls. “They all went running for the door but I said to my boss ‘look, there’s no point going anywhere because the airport will be closed’.”

After calling his family and workmates, Kilduff calmly made his way to the airport, and within hours was on board an air ambulance flying into the devastated city.
“One of my control managers has been in the game for years and normally nothing rattles him,” Kilduff recalls. “You could tell from his voice that he was quite shook up by the way the building reacted. It nearly collapsed so they were pretty lucky.”

With his family out of harm’s way, and his house out of reach due to flooding in the city, Kilduff spent the night trying to figure out the extent of the damage.

/><br /> <br /> <em>Christchurch earthquake approximate areas without power as at 4 pm Monday 13 June 2011. Image from Orion.</em><br /> <br /> Allowing a single view of the city’s network, in real time, the system enabled the Orion team to prioritise the repair of key locations such as hospitals and communications facilities, and track the team as they restored power across the city.<br /> <br /> Kilduff says Orion is now in the process of building a second data centre, and a new emergency operations centre. If another earthquake were to hit Christchurch, the Orion grid and control centre will be more resilient.<br /> <br /> More emergency trained staff, better systems and a well-established network of contractors are ready to respond at a moment’s notice, but Kilduff hopes he’ll never have to call them into action.<br /> <br /> “With a bit of luck it won’t happen again in my lifetime,” he says.<br /> <br /> <em>Images care of <a href=Orion and Stuff.co.nz