Water flowing well after Ohakune outage

Ruapehu's civil defence controller says the restoration of tap water in the central North Island town of Ohakune has gone smoothly so far.

The town was without water from Sunday morning to Tuesday evening as damage to the main pipeline, caused by an earthquake late last month, was repaired. This forced eateries and schools to close.

The controller, Vini Dutra, said a small number of leaks had sprung as the system was repressurised, and these would require shutdowns to parts of the network while they were repaired.

Restoration of the water system had gone well, and no significant problems were reported.

A boil water notice remained in place and required three consecutive days of clear results before it could lift. People were advised to boil water for two minutes and then let it cool before drinking it or using it for food preparation.

A water tanker outside the council offices on Ayr Street would stay until the notice was lifted.

Public toilets in the town were expected to reopen on Thursday.

Dutra said the outage highlighted the importance of residents having emergency plans and being prepared to manage without outside help for at least three days.

"Households should store at least three litres of water per person per day for drinking and basic hygiene.

"We encourage people to keep and reuse the large plastic water containers distributed during the outage as a starting point for their household emergency supplies."