Mayor: Recovery will take time
Huge rainfall leaves mark on coast
WAITAKI’S Emergency Operations Centre has closed, but as the floodwaters recede the public will have to be patient as Waitaki District Council sets about managing the district’s recovery, Mayor Gary Kircher says.
A MetService spokesman said 134mm of rain fell in Oamaru in the 24 hours from 9am on Friday to 9am on Saturday .
It became evident sewage might have contaminated some properties in Oamaru’s North End.
Mr Kircher said people with any infrastructure issues in the coming weeks should call the council.
‘‘We’d rather three people log an issue than noone does.’’
He said the district was now in recovery, but council staff and contractors would be stretched by the upcoming workload of repairs.
‘‘We’re certainly hoping the cleanup will happen as quickly as possible.’’
He said it was still too early to say what the damage across the district would cost to repair.
‘‘It’s certainly going to take more time to fully assess it, but it’s evident in places there’s considerable damage that will take time and money to fix. There’s some private property damage that people will have to go through insurers for. The good thing is that it’s not across the whole district.’’
Senior Sergeant Jason McCoy, of Oamaru, thanked the people who listened to warnings about treacherous roads and weather and stayed home.
He also thanked the volunteers who helped where they could and those people who kept an eye out for their neighbours.
However, he criticised those who ignored weather warnings and put themselves and others at risk.
At least four drivers took their cars down a closed road north of Oamaru and got stuck in floodwaters.
‘‘There’s a number of cars that got stuck down in Richmond because they drove down a road that was closed. That puts people who respond at risk. People need to be mindful about going into areas that are dangerous.’’
Oamaru Volunteer Fire Brigade chief Steve Couper is expecting more callouts for his crews over the next few days as people return home from school holidays to find their basements flooded.
‘‘It’s going to be an ongoing thing. A lot of the water is still running off the hills. A lot of people still have water around their houses. All our hire agencies have no more portable pumps because they’re all out.’’
As of 7pm yesterday, the brigade units had attended 95 calls.
Mr Couper said the whole operation went well from the brigade’s point of view and the crews did as much as they could.
‘‘We limited our pumping to where [water] was threatening property. We didn’t pump out sections.’’
He said the public had been generous with donations of food for brigade members.
The food made a big difference to the firefighters, who at times found themselves wading through substances that were not just water, he said.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand sent six firefighters up from Dunedin in an army Unimog truck.
‘‘They spent two days helping us. Gave our guys a bit of a break at times.’’
Mr Couper was pleased with how well his team worked and was happy the weather event was over.
‘‘It’s not something you want to go on and on for days and days.’’
Network Waitaki chief executive Graham Clark said calls started to come in early Friday night, mostly because trees were striking lines, but as more and more flooding occurred switchgear was hit and people started to lose power.
Most outages occurred on North Otago’s coastal strip, he said, and by last night he believed all power had been restored.
shannon.gillies@odt.co.nz