Family left in cold by council’s tree inertia
Contractors overwhelmed by work from wild storm damage in April
I shouldn’t have to pay them to fix my house when it was damaged by a council tree. Lisa Blake
An Auckland family faces the prospect of braving winter under a tarpaulin after council delays slowed attempts to repair damage to their home from April’s wild storm.
The storm hit with 120km/h wind gusts that knocked out power to as many as 180,000 properties and toppled trees across the city.
One gust sent a huge branch crashing through the roof of Lisa Blake’s home in Conifer Grove, South Auckland.
She says she alerted the council to the potentially dangerous tree on its land on two occasions, and now has to apply for council building consent for her repair work at a cost of about $2000.
Much of Blake’s home remains offlimits, a month after the event, and is draped in blue tarpaulin that keeps the rain out but not the cold.
Blake says the cost of damage to her property is about $50,000 and repairs seem unlikely before June’s winter freeze sets in.
Council contractors only this week cleared away the branch debris and cut down the rest of the tree that had continued to sway “wildly” on the night of the storm.
Blake says she has been told there could be a wait of up to two months for the building consent process to be approved.
The council has since told the Weekend Herald that Blake may qualify for compensation for the damage.
But Blake calls the potential consent fee a sting in the tail after she earlier warned the local authority the tree was dangerous.
“I accept they couldn’t have known it would fall on that day — although I wish they took me more seriously when I told them the tree was dangerous,” she said.
“But I shouldn’t have to pay them to fix my house when it was damaged by a council tree, and I shouldn’t need to continually chase them to finish the clean-up job.”
Auckland Council acting head of Operational Management and Maintenance Simon Randall disputes Blake’s claim, saying his records showed she only complained about nuisance leaves and broken branches. He also said April’s storm was “unprecedented”.
At Manukau Heads, the strongest gust hit 213km/h and the Fire and Emergency service took 1350 calls within four hours at the height of the storm.
Auckland Council was also flooded with 3103 “requests for service” in the three days after the storm, compared to a usual daily average of 250 jobs.
Almost 1800 callouts were emergency jobs and more than 2000 related to downed trees.
By the end of the first week after the storm, the volume of jobs was the equivalent of three months’ work.
Despite arborist crews working 12-hour shifts during the first week, the clean-up is expected to take several weeks more to finish, Randall said. “Requests continue to come in at three times the normal volume as
broken branches begin to brown off and become more visible.”
Blake understands council has been under pressure but believes its response has been poor.
She said she has only been contacted by a council staff member once. She has had to repeatedly call the council and log new jobs with it.
First, she requested it remove the fallen tree branch from her roof.
But when the contractors came, they chopped it up and left the cut pieces behind, forcing Blake to call again and ask for a new team to come and remove them.
Then she had to call again to say, “Can you cut the rest of the tree down, it is pretty dangerous”.
Both jobs were only completed this week.
“I feel that if your property has been damaged this much by a council tree . . . there should be someone from the council that makes contact with you,” she said.
They could become your liaison person and keep in touch with you, she said. “I shouldn’t have to ring them continuously.”
Randall said the delay was unfortunate but the council had been busy with more urgent jobs. “Unfortunately, due to the scale of the event, there are sites that are taking much longer than desired to attend.”
He said the part of the tree still looming over Blake’s house had been “deemed safe and did not present any hazard”.