A 45-year-old woman who crashed her vehicle in Fatai on September 16 has been ordered to pay for damage to a power pole, which left over 700 customers in five villages on the Eastern District without power for over three hours.

The Magistrate’s Court in Nukunuku ordered her to pay for the relevant damages to the power pole yesterday, Thursday September 18.

Police in Nuku’alofa said that Losaline Tonga Ma’ata, who is living in Lakepa, was unharmed and had been charged with reckless driving. The accident happened when she tried to overtake a vehicle in front of her heading west on the same lane, and crashed into a power pole in front of the Assembly of God Church in Fatai.

Power outage

Meanwhile, Tonga Power said today that the costs for repairing the damaged pole would amount to about  $2000 pa’anga.

The accident caused power outages to over 700 customers, who were left without power for around three-hours in Fatai, Nukunuku, Sia’atoutai, Matahau and Lakepa.

Four teams of linesmen were dispatched to the scene to replace the broken power pole and began repairing the outage at 4:45pm. The power supply to these areas was restored at 8:00pm on the same day.

Setitaia Chen, Tonga Power’s Design and Planning Manager said vehicles crashing into power poles remained an on-going high risk on the network.

“The loss of supply to the affected areas can range from one hour to as long as eight hours to repair, depending on its extent and the type of structure that has been damaged. Every unplanned repair work to the High Voltage line due to car accidents is a very costly exercise, which unfortunately affects many households,” he said.