Coast clean-up bill already $6.7m

The West Coast’s clean-up bill after last week’s ex-cyclone Fehi is already in the millions.

The Buller District Council has already deemed about $5.7 million of residential property uninhabitable after last week’s storm, but there was a possibility some properties could be salvaged.

Insurance companies had so far registered at least 100 claims from the West Coast – and the figure was rising.

Fehi and king tides lashed the region and Tasman District on Thursday, bringing slips onto roads, sea surges, high winds, flash flooding, power outages and evacuations.

Thirty-two houses – of which the latest average price from QV was $179,147 – had been redstickered by the council for a variety of reasons, such as damage to the electrical or sewerage systems.

As yet uncounted costs were the damage to 21 properties in Buller that had been ‘‘yellow-stickered’’ – deemed damaged, but habitable.

Council chief executive Andy Gowland-Douglas said the majority of the red-stickered properties were on the outskirts of Westport. This included the Snodgrass area to the east of town on the banks of the Orowaiti Lagoon and the northern end of Derby St on the northern side of town.

Other red-stickered properties were in Granity, north of Westport, and Charleston and Fox River to the south.

The Insurance Council of New Zealand chief executive Tim Grafton said a provisional total cost of claims would not be known for another six weeks.

AA insurance head of claims Simon Hobbs said the insurer had so far received less than 50 home, contents and car claims from West Coast residents, but that number was expected to rise over the next week.

‘‘While the number of claims may sound relatively low, most of the damage has been extensive and has been heartbreaking for many of our customers,’’ he said.

‘‘The most common damage reported has been widespread flooding, including waist-deep water throughout homes, rental properties and garages in Westport and Charleston.

‘‘We won’t know the full cost of damage until all properties have been assessed, which we are undertaking with urgency, but we expect claims to continue to come in over the next week or so.’’

A Vero Insurance spokeswoman said it had already lodged 75 claims from the South Island as a result of Fehi, but it was to early to calculate the costs. None of the other major insurance companies The Pressapproached were able to provide figures yet.

The New Zealand Transport Authority did not provide a cost estimate, but a spokesman said the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) was usually enough to cover events such as this.

‘‘We’re still assessing the damage and scoping the repairs for the state highway network at this stage,’’ he said. ‘‘One hundred per cent of the costs for state highways are usually covered, given that the NLTF is the only source of funding on most occasions.’’

Meanwhile, the Grey District Council has approved the building of a $1m wall to hold in rubbish from the old Cobden dump.

Tens of thousands of plastic bags littered Cobden Beach on Friday as the old dump was exposed by the storm and being eroded by the sea. By yesterday the council had cleared any dangerous material and a public working bee was to begin on Waitangi Day morning.

A council spokesman said it would take two weeks for plans for the wall to be drawn up. In the meantime rubble would be piled in font of the dump from tomorrow to try and prevent further leakage.

Tourists did not seem to be perturbed by the storm and subsequent damage to infrastructure.

Tourism West Coast chief executive Jim Little said the only impact so far had been the couple of nights accommodation lost by providers during the storm.

‘‘The economic impact as far as tourism goes is actually quite minimal. It’s not major. The big impact economically is going to be infrastructure. There were a few cancellations for one or two nights while the storm was on and people were blocked. Apart from that it’s all back to normal.’’

He said accommodation providers that he had been talking to seemed satisfied that things had returned to normal for their peak summer season.

‘‘I’ve been speaking to people in Franz [Josef] and Punakaiki and they’re all full up. There may be one or two further out that are a bit nervous about it,’’ he said.

The Cobden Beach working bee was due to begin at 9am today.