2017 - Edgecumbe Stop Bank Breach

On 6 April 2017, the stop bank at Edgecumbe broke at 8.30 am, flooding properties and isolating around 2,000 people within minutes. The cause had been the heavy rain received as a remnant of Cyclone Debbie. Six days later, on 12 April Cyclone Cook made landfall at 6 pm. A small variation of degree in touching down was to be the difference between Edgecumbe and other parts of the Eastern Bay of Plenty flooding and lower risk. Immediately, 19,405 connections were lost. On the same day, 18,060 were restored. Five thousand metres of power lines were replaced, and 15 poles, six transformers and one 11kV switch were lost during the outage.