A bird strike and damaged equipment caused power cuts to about 1125 properties across Whanganui on Sunday.

Parnells Cafe front-of-house manager Courtenay Bester said the outage at 10.35am could not have come at a worse time for the business.

One Sunday a month, Parnells Cafe hosts a breakfast special, but customers for all of their fully-booked tables had to be turned away because of the lack of power.

“That power cut was pretty big for us. It would have been our biggest day of the month,” Bester said.

“In the hour and 40 minutes it was down, we lost a horrific amount of trading.”

Some of their gelato, cabinet food and milk was spoiled: “It’s a long time to be without power.”

A Foodstuffs spokesperson said New World Whanganui was closed for about 90 minutes during the power cut.

“There was no stock lost, apart from a few items in the hot cabinet.”

A Powerco spokesperson said the 10.35am outage affected 619 properties in central Whanganui, College Estate and Springvale.

“Power was progressively restored to affected customers, with all supply restored by 12.34pm.”

The cause of the outage was a bird strike, which is when a bird is injured or killed as a result of it accidentally colliding with power lines.

“Live lines can kill, which is why it’s advised to treat lines as live at all times and keep people and equipment at least 4m away from overhead lines to avoid coming into contact with them,” Powerco said.

Bester said there was “no communication at all” from the power company after they had logged the power cut on the outages website.

“We were down two hours' trading and, you know, we still have to pay staff, lease and all of our trading costs,” she said.

“The revenue we lost would have been huge yesterday.

“We will absolutely do it again, but we just really hope that everyone will book in then.”

The business was closed for nearly two hours, with all the food having to be reheated after power was restored.

A second outage at 5.02pm on Sunday affected 506 properties in the Bastia Hill and Durie Hill suburbs.

The cause of the second power cut was damaged equipment, the Powerco spokesperson said.

Power was restored by 7.21pm.

Eva de Jong is a reporter for the Whanganui Chronicle covering health stories and general news. She began as a reporter in 2023.