The death of a 28-year-old Palmerston man, whose breathing apparatus stopped during a 90-minute power cut early on Thursday, has been referred to the coroner, Oamaru police confirmed yesterday.
Senior Sergeant Jason McCoy would not comment further, but the Otago Daily Times has learned the dead man was Wayne Haaima.
His father, Rick, said when contacted the family did not want to comment at this stage.
A fault at Palmerston cut power from about 3am until PowerNet's contractor, Otago Power Services, restored supply at 4.28am.
Nearly 1000 customers in Palmerston and the surrounding area were affected, PowerNet chief executive Martin Walton said yesterday.
The company had no indication of anyone with any medical condition in that area, he said.
Before any planned shut-downs, letters were sent advising all customers and asking anyone with a problem to notify the company.
It had records of some people with medical conditions.
Thursday night's outage was unplanned and the focus was on restoring supply and making the network safe.
It was treated as a normal supply interruption, with contractors sent to restore power.
"We're obviously very sorry something like this has happened," Mr Walton said.
He was not aware of the circumstances surrounding the man's death.
Police had advised the contractors someone had died during the night and inquired about the possible cause of the outage.
The company was still not certain of the cause.
It would co-operate with any investigation, he said.
A man who services medical equipment said breathing apparatus that ran on electricity, including oxygen machines or the more crucial ventilators, should switch automatically to battery back-up if its power supply was cut.
An alarm would immediately sound and the battery should last two to four hours, said the man, who declined to be named.
When power was restored, the ventilator would automatically resume using mains electricity as its power source.
Because they were crucial pieces of equipment, ventilators were required to be tested regularly to make sure all their parts, including batteries, were functioning correctly, he said.
