New Zealand's second largest lines company says 60% of its power outages this week could have been avoided if people had taken better care of trees growing underneath wires or alongside them.
Thousands of properties lost power when trees crashed onto wires during storms in the Wairarapa and elsewhere in the southern North Island on Monday.
Powerco's networks operations manager Phil Marsh says most of these could have been avoided if the property owners had trimmed trees on their properties.
Mr Marsh says it costs a lot of money to repair lines and causes a lot of inconvenience and most of this could have been avoided.
He says property owners should take better care of trees by lines but should use professional tree trimmers to avert possible dangers from live wires.
