Wellington City Council officials admit they should have told the public earlier about the risk posed by 17,000 faulty street lamps, which are liable to shear off in high winds.
Seventeen of the LED lamps installed in 2018 have fallen in the past four years, with 161 reported as "drooping", according to a report released on Wednesday.
There have been several reports of near misses, including one in Berhampore crashing onto a pedestrian crossing just moments after a group of schoolchildren crossed the road.
Council chief infrastructure officer Siobhan Procter said she only found out about the problem in February from media reports, and insisted all the executive leadership was in the dark until then.
It appeared operational staff dealt with all the droopy and fallen lamps over the years "as one-off instances", and there was no analysis to determine whether it was a widespread issue, Procter said.
Wellington City Council chief infrastructure officer Siobhan Procter. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
"We did have some initial testing done after the first failures back in 2019, the manufacturer did some testing. We were provided some assurance from the consultant engineer working for the manufacturer that they didn't pose a risk, and that may have played a part in the way it was treated at operational level," she said.
"What it's pointed to is the way we treat and escalate operational risks.
"We have now addressed this issue so we can avoid instances like this in future."
The lamp has fallen off this Wellington street light due to a faulty adaptor. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
In February this year, the city council commissioned engineering laboratory WSP to stress-test a sample of the fixtures. This showed, despite the adaptors being able to carry a static load of up to 60kg, they were "unsuitable" for Wellington's windy conditions.
It also revealed that - contrary to previous assessments - all 17,000 fittings were at risk.
Procter admitted staff did not tell elected councillors or the public about this at the time, as they wanted to have a remediation and funding plan in place first.
In retrospect, this was a mistake, "but we have also learned from that", she said.
Council transport and infrastructure manager Brad Singh said the faulty aluminium-alloy adaptor fitting was an in-house design to reduce glare for neighbouring residents.
About 17,000 street lights in Wellington have been revealed to be at risk of snapping off due to a faulty aluminium-alloy adaptor (pictured). Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
The council has already replaced 600 of the faulty adaptors and aims to complete the work within 12 months, starting with the 3200 in high-wind areas first.
"Is there risk? Yes, there is. However, the risk of a street lamp falling is quite low, considering only 0.1 percent of them have fallen.
"Having said that, we take health and safety very seriously, so we're treating this as a top priority and dealing with this as quickly as we can."
Evans Bay resident Chris Calvi-Freeman could first noticed a street lamp "swinging" in the breeze in February.
He reported it to the council but a couple of days later, came across another one that had snapped off completely.
"If one of those came down on your head or through your car windscreen, it would kill you. There's no doubt about that."
Evans Bay resident Chris Calvi-Freeman says he's horrified that the problem with Wellington's street lamps has taken so long to come to light. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
A former city councillor himself, he was horrified that the problem had taken so long to come to light.
"What you're dealing with here is a major systemic failure.
"I was surprised that highways maintenance contractors weren't already expected to report obvious street lighting failure issues such as dangling lamps.
"The council's request to the public to report dangling streetlights for immediate attention is commendable, although council staff including street engineers and inspectors should arguably have been more diligent and proactive in spotting and reporting these failures. Perhaps it's a case of looking down at the road but not up at the sky."
South Coast resident Mike Potton was bemused by the council's claims earlier this year that it had only recently become aware of the problem.
A street light in Wellington which has snapped due to a faulty adaptor. Photo: Supplied
In June 2021, he shot a video on his phone of a lamp swinging madly by a wire outside his house during a massive storm.
"I'd seen it droop earlier in the storm and then when I came back to look at it again, that's when I saw it swinging around.
"Seeing this street light come down, I thought, 'That should have been built to withstand these conditions'."
Potton said the lamp finally crashed to the ground, narrowly missing a parked car, and was collected by a council contractor a couple of days later.
Wellington City Council estimated it would cost about $6 million to fix all the lamps and it had asked Waka Kotahi - which subsidised the initial installation - to help bear the cost.
Waka Kotahi has told RNZ it would assess the formal funding application when it was received.
