Pylon collapse: Engineer raised concerns over baseplate know-how in 2021
A report into the collapse of a electricity transmission tower in Northland in June this year has confirmed the removal of nuts from the tower’s baseplates was to blame, and highlighted some oversights by the organisation responsible for the national grid, Transpower.
Here is what I think happened with the Pylon collapse.
A relative of mine last November had a van full of Filipino electricians turn up at her house.
The local mutation of a power company she is with were updating their power monitors from 2G to 4G and were sending out ‘staff’ to do this upgrade.
The ‘staff’ turned out to be Filipino Electricians who were conned into coming to NZ under the belief they would work as electricians only to find they had been recruited because they had the lowest and cheapest transferable skill sets.
These Filipino Electricians were told they were all contractors now and had to buy cars (from a vender who price gouged them), but gear (from a vender who price gouged them), and they were told they had to get housing (from a vender who price gouged them) that kept them working around the clock.
The Filipino Electricians who were so surprised to find thesmelves in such an unequal deal actually asked my relative to check their contract top see if it was really true.
My female relative had to tell them, “Why yes, you are fucked”.
We have built our economy on 4 pillars:
- Steal Māori land and NEVER pay for the full cost of that theft
- Allow property speculators to have enormous political influence
- Milk powder über alles
- Addiction to a Low wage economy that exploits migrant workers and drives wages down
It’s the fourth one that I believe brought the Pylon down.
I have no proof of this but my guess is that Omexom, the company subcontracted for this Pylon maintenance, were exactly like the Filipino Electricians. Migrant workers lured here on the false pretence of a job that quickly melts down to the lowest cost possible for the company who doesn’t do anything and just subcontracts it out.
I bet exploited migrant labour was behind the Pylon coming down and that this type of exploitation is not part of any examination of what went wrong.
It’s not locals who have been trained here, it’s workers being brought in with very little training causing these massive mistakes.
Let me be clear, my heart goes out to those Filipino Electricians and we have an obligation to stamp put migrant worker exploitation, I’m not blaming them for the Pylon falling over, I’m blaming corrupt business practices focused in importing workers with the legally barest qualifications so they can continue to reap profits.
Transpower made a $68million profit last year, they make that money by squeezing labour costs which lead to things like the Pylon following over.
Again, I have no proof Omexom hired in migrant workers, but I am deeply suspicious.
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Regardless, the people working in that pylon had maybe 2 braincells between them. Even if you are a mentally retarded 5 year old, you could have figured out this particular cause and effect.
While undoing all the bolts holding the pylon to the concrete pads is obviously a potential disaster you are naive if you think that this was the first time it happened. With no wind gravity it going to keep the pylon upright and with repeating a task being much faster than having to change tasks continually the subcontracting model which rewards quantity and not quality will always drive workers to find the quickest way to do jobs. Thankfully we have better rules in the building industry since leaking homes to give more protection however the same bad habits regarding the external house envelope still exist with some people so rules need to be tighter and not relaxed or problems will happen again.
Even if you are wrong, it’s obvious that Transpower knew there was a skills gap and did nothing. Where did Kainga Ora’s old board go? Probably to find a place for Transpower’s.
Had some Indian neighbours a while back they were all Spark subcontractors. They had all had to buy 25 year old untuned nearly dead vans which still had Telecom logos. Everyone has seen photos of wiring birds nests on third world telecommunication overhead lines. According to a mate the level of lets call it ‘tidiness’ on the chorus network has become much less professional.
Joseph Yes, the same may be said about Chorus subcontractors as these exploited Filipino workers, IMO. They have created unsightly and ramshackle connections likening neighbourhoods to third world alleyways.
Just about bet my left nut in what you have described @ Martyn Bradbury won’t be to far from the truth.
Am intrigued how “Steal Māori land and NEVER pay for the full cost of that theft”contributed to the incorrect and unsafe work practice to unbolt the pylon legs without alternative bracing.
That is one very large bow to draw.
Similarly what have property speculators contributed to the negligence?
You have a very valid point off concern with cheap migrant labour and lack of training/supervision.
However you cloud the issue with milk powder, land ownership or property speculators.
We have built our economy on 4 pillars:
Steal Māori land and NEVER pay for the full cost of that theft
Allow property speculators to have enormous political influence
Milk powder über alles
Addiction to a Low wage economy that exploits migrant workers and drives wages down
It’s the fourth one that I believe brought the Pylon down.
You forgot to mention Bill English disgracefully demonising young Kiwi guys as unemployable layabout druggies to justify importing cheap Asian labour. If that’s what Bill thinks is social investment, then I’m Charley’s Aunt.
The thing that worries me about these massive pylons is that there are ONLY 3 screws holding the bloody thing up
Bolts mate, bolts. Screws are for wood.
Proper locked in foundation bolts with the right screw thread, tensile strength and torqued down (even some blue locktite) are way stronger then they need to be. Remember the legs of the pylon are well spread out so the loading is spread over a very wide compression area.
A single bolt for that application of say 24mm has a shear factor of 235Kn (23.5 Metric Tons). Far more then enough for that application. The closer you get to the centre of effort (on say a round windmill support tower) the number of bolts are increased due to the greater shear forces, acting as leverage, closer to the centre line.
Bomber may be right and he may be wrong on who were the contractors in this debacle.
In general terms he is dead right, my partner as a union organiser dealt with Filipino members who were indeed housed in rental dumps, asked to pay for their own safety equipment and worse. Various minor disasters and faults often ensued with lines, and not knowing where water and sewer pipes were.
The power company here has admitted their failure re training, but are not yet offering real compensation on the multi million dollar loss for Northlanders. The Power Infrastructure and ownership in this country needs a major look at. I am an advocate for a return to full public ownership and booting Rio Tinto’s smelter. In Northland we have a geothermal power station at Ngawha Springs which produces enough to power the Far North, but…the power goes into the national grid not a local one…so when the pylon toppled it was not able to be accessed.
Now you will appreciate why the international education market in New Zealand is such a scam. NZ is one of the only “western” countries that allows international students to sign up for courses and NOT have to prove they have enough money to survive the year, and NZ is one of the only countries which also permits them to work.
The education market actively lobbied to let those students work to hugely increase their pool of potential customers. So NZ’s international education market became an effective organised immigration scam. They pay to come here to do largely worthless courses, they can work while here and tend to end up in vulnerable roles. They can generally also apply for residency after part of their course. This is literally a key marketing pitch used by international education providers here. And the government pretends it’s not exactly what the industry is about and why the changes were made. Suppressing wage growth is just a lovely bonus for corporates.
If you see almost any crew of contract cleaners, telco maintenance or installation workers etc, many of them are students from abroad barely earning enough to survive and who wouldn’t be allowed to study in the Australia, Canada, UK, US etc.
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