Busy times for cleaning crews
As residents contend with the damp aftermath of ex-cyclone Fehi, Nelson’s clean-up kings are clocking up some big hours to restore damaged homes.
For Jae Services Tasman owner Tim Vincent, the wild weather had barely ceased on Thursday before phone calls for assistance started coming through ‘‘thick and fast’’.
Since then, Vincent and his 15 staff have been working long hours, often until midnight, to help with flood restoration work on the estimated 70 homes affected by last week’s storm.
‘‘A lot of our work comes from insurance, so we were getting referrals straight from them and on Friday we started getting even more of them – Saturday we were still getting more and then it stopped – I think that we must have got them all by then.’’
‘‘It’s a big job, but we’re getting through it.’’
Vincent said a large portion of his team’s flood restoration work was based around houses in Broad Sea Ave and Tait St in Ruby Bay.
Jobs had also been logged in Takaka and Motueka as well as businesses in Richmond.
The restoration process involved cleaning out, sanitising and structural drying out of the affected homes, as well as organising builders to cut out wall linings and organising skip bins for clients.
‘‘The next phase is getting these frames dry so the builders can then reline them and get people back into their homes,’’ Vincent said.
‘‘In the coming days we’ll be under houses, spraying under floors.’’
Already well-versed in the art of flood restoration with local floods in 2013 and at Riwaka of 2015, Vincent said Jae’s had also lent a hand in other flood zones like Edgecumbe in the Bay of Plenty.
‘‘We’ve got some help from other parts of the country as well – a lot of dryers, fans and dehumidifiers being sent in to help dry down these places.’’
Also flat-out was Chemdry Nelson’s Brendan Crichton, who had more than 30 jobs from the worst hit areas around Monaco and the Ruby Bay coast through to one river-flooded Maitai Valley property.
‘‘It’s been pretty widespread – we’ve had our guys from Christchurch coming up to help just to get on top of things quite quickly,’’ he said.
‘‘We’re dealing with people’s whole house ... really just getting them back into a position where contractors can get into the property and get it properly stripped dry on the contents side of things.’’
The likelihood of contaminated ‘‘blackwater’’ in and around properties required plenty of safety precautions from gumboots, gloves and respirators through to tyvek coveralls.
‘‘Every single job we’re doing is being treated as a bio hazard – we just can’t take that risk,’’ Crichton said.