New Zealand’s capital is being plagued by hundreds of potentially deadly street lights that have begun dropping without warning and smashing on the footpath below.
Wellington city council spokesperson Richard MacLean said the council was aware of the problem. The lamp heads weighed up to 15kg (33lb), he said – about equivalent to a bulk sack of rice, full-grown border collie or a microwave oven. They were falling from heights of 4-6m.
If one fell on you, MacLean said, “I think it’d be safe to say that you would either be seriously injured or killed”.
Reports of faulty Wellington street lamps depositing their heads emerged on Friday morning when an ex-councillor discovered one smashed on the ground near his house and noted that six more on the street were missing their lamps. The metal attaching them to their posts appeared to have shorn away.
The council was investigating the problem, MacLean said, and believed there had been a “bad batch” of lamps with degraded fixings.
“It appears to be a problem with metal fatigue or something, something going on with the fixings … that hold the light to the lamp[post],” he said. “We’ve only had probably a handful of actual incidents”.
While the council initially estimated only about 100 were affected, on Friday afternoon it revised that up, saying there may be about 1000 of the faulty lamps scattered among the city’s 17,000 lamp-posts. It did not know which ones were affected, MacLean said, and had not launched a city-wide assessment of every lamp-post.
“We’re aware of probably one or two or three that have actually hit the ground. But that doesn’t mean to say we’re not taking the whole thing seriously.”
City council transport and infrastructure manager Brad Singh said the council was working with contractors to try to trace where the bad lamps had been installed, and said “in the meantime Council contractors are checking spigots every time they go up a pole”.
“We’re really sorry that this is happening – we don’t want people worrying about what’s above their heads when they’re out walking or driving,” he said.
As a precautionary measure, Maclean urged pedestrians to look out for any street lamps that appeared to be “drooping”, saying the lamps typically wilted before they dropped.
“If you see any sort of street lamps that are kind of starting to droop at a weird angle, give the council a call.”
