Region’s roads begin to reopen

Residents of Wyndham and Mataura can return home but are being advised to be careful driving as there is significant damage to roads and bridges surrounding the town.

Residents have started to return to Mataura as state highway 1 through the Southland town has reopened with a 30 kilometre restriction.

The area has been reopened for residents although there was still many roads with surface flooding that include Main St between the Caltex and Tullochs Transport, Oakland St between Tulloch Park and Burns Street, Bangor St, Bristol St,Carteret St, Dover St, Carlyle St and McConnell St.

A community support centre had been established at the Mataura community centre as a number of properties are inhabitable. The centre will have a porta-loo established with a water tanker expected to arrive at 8pm.

Both State Highway 94 and SH1, to the west and east of Gore, had also reopened by yesterday afternoon, allowing residents to leave the flooded town.

Last night, the Southland District Council was working on establishing a one-lane gravel track for the section of the road damaged between Wyndham and the bridge which, depending on how fast the flood water receded, could take up to four hours.

The work would need sandbagging material and involved co-ordination with Emergency Management Southland.

New Zealand Transport Agency journey manager Peter Brown said they were still busy with evaluations and assessments, and some highways weren’t ready to be reopened yet.

It would take until the end of the weekend at least to work out when the Milford road could reopen.

There is still damage to the busy stretch of highway, and the most-damaged piece would take ‘‘some time to repair’’.

Contractors at the Milford road are ‘‘sufficiently staffed and resourced to deal with the damage’’, Brown said.

Similarly, the road between Frankton and Kingston would need some repair. However, SH6 from Lumsden to Frankton was reopened yesterday afternoon.

Other highways should be able to open once water receded, Brown said.

While to was too early to compare this week’s events to previous floods, the fact that there was so much rain in such a short period of time was significant, he said.

The small stretch of SH6 just north of Makarewa had reopened yesterday.