Another cyclone warning for Coast

A state of emergency could be declared on the West Coast as early as tonight if predictions about the intensity of Cyclone Gita hold true.

The storm, which caused havoc in Tonga last week, has the South Island in its ‘‘firing line’’. Its centre is predicted to make landfall in the northwest of the island late tomorrow.

And West Coast residents ‘‘getting their lives back together’’ after the devastation of ex-tropical cyclone Fehi a fortnight ago could be among those worst affected.

MetService issued a severe weather watch yesterday, warning of a ‘‘period of highly impactful severe weather’’, including galeforce winds, heavy rain and coastal inundation for central New Zealand.

The West Coast Regional Council chief executive along with the mayors of the Buller, Grey and Westland districts and Civil Defence will meet at 5pm today to assess the latest predictions.

Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn said ‘‘we want to wait another day so we shore up more reliable data’’, but if ‘‘it still looks bad [tonight] and we get Cyclone Ita-type winds, we will make a call [on the state of emergency] one way or another’’. ‘‘We don’t want to be alarmist, but we want to be safe rather than sorry.’’

The remnants of Cyclone Ita struck New Zealand in April 2014. Winds peaked at 130kmh in Westport, the Buller district was left without power, and 39 homes in the Grey district were left uninhabitable.

WeatherWatch head forecaster Phillip Duncan said Gita was ‘‘bigger’’ and ‘‘more powerful’’ than extropical cyclone Fehi, which caused extensive damage when it hit the West Coast this month.

Modelling showed the storm sitting off Cook Strait by 3pm today. It was due to hit the South Island directly by 9pm, bringing with it sustained gale-force winds in places of 60 to 80kmh from Taranaki to Westport, Duncan said.

‘‘Localised gusts could climb over 150kmh in exposed rural areas, possibly higher. Damaging and destructive gusts are possible in all those main West Coast towns,’’ he said.

More than 100 millimetres of rain could fall within 24 hours in regions where MetService had heavy rain watches in place, including Canterbury, Marlborough, Nelson, parts of the West Coast, Wellington and Horowhenua.

West Coast Regional Councul chief executive Mike Meehan said there was a ‘‘heightened awareness’’ of the risk posed by a storm

system like Gita in the wake of Fehi, which caused 32 homes to be red-stickered and 27 to be yellowstickered in the Buller district.

‘‘If we have a reiteration of that when [people are] trying to have builders do restoration work, it just sets them back again,’’ Buller District Mayor Garry Howard said.

Granity man Ken Richards had ‘‘four inches’’ of water come through his Torea St home of eight years during Fehi. It was now yellow-stickered, and ‘‘unliveable’’. Water-damaged carpets had been removed on Thursday, and now the West Coast was – yet again – bracing for another blow. But Richards was stoic, saying ‘‘it’s just nature, isn’t it? You can’t do anything about it, so you just cop it. You’ve just got to cop it on the chin. We’ll see where we are at the end of it . . .’’

Richards, who was renting a house in nearby Hector while he worked through his insurance claim, said the forecast gale-force winds were a concern. ‘‘There’ll be trees down, roof iron flying – I guarantee it’’.

Other local authorities around the South Island had also issued warnings ahead of Cyclone Gita. Christchurch was expected to get between 50mm to 75mm of rain on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Council contractors were checking the stormwater network yesterday, while residents in floodprone areas were advised to take ‘‘all the usual precautions’’, a council spokeswoman said.

Civil Defence and Emergency Management director Sarah Stuart-Black said Gita ‘‘has the potential to pack a punch and cause a lot of disruption’’.

She urged people to prepare for the possibility of power cuts, water outages and road closures.