Southland's road to recovery

with council staff to remediate the problem at the transfer station and get assurance from them it would be considered ‘‘a matter of urgency’’.

He did not know why the council was not using the pump.

GDC roading asset manager Peter Standring said the transfer station was developed in 2005, but he did not know if the levels of the site were altered at the time or if it was an existing low point.

‘‘There has not been a flood to the same capacity since the new site was developed. It has now been highlighted as a clear gap in our river defences.

‘‘Since early discussions with the local residents, council has commissioned surveys of the area and had talks with Environment Southland about possible solutions.’’

The discussion was ongoing. However, 12 months on from the flood, nothing had been done, Mr Harris said.

‘‘I couldn’t go through that again.

‘‘Something needs to happen.’’

Toronto St business owner David Ugy agreed.

He claimed flooding was directly linked to the stopbank modification, which caused water to flow through a gap about 12m long at the entrance to the transfer station.

‘‘The stopbank should go from the kiosk to Riches Bank but was modified to make it easier to get the large rubbish skips out.’’

Gordon Haugh, a resident in Toronto St, was one of those who contacted council to warn staff of the increasing amount of water flowing through.

While they seemed responsive on the phone about 1pm, it was not until about 5pm he saw council workers on site, he said.

‘‘I watched them just turn around. I don’t think they did anything. They told me on the phone there was just a lot going on.’’

When nothing had been done to stop the flow, Mr Ugy built a dam using concrete power poles.

Despite the threat of being arrested, he was confident the whole street would have flooded if it was not for the makeshift dam.

Police did not charge him.

‘‘It went from being a river to a gutter stream after I put that up.’’

As the water continued to rise, a state of emergency was declared in Fiordland.

The decision to extend this to Southland followed and allowed for more resources and support from other organisations to manage the cleanup.

Helen and Jock Cummings’ 103ha dairy farm in Wyndham

TWIZEL

OTEMATATA RANFURLY OAMARU PALMERSTON was 80% underwater.

Fences were written off, paddocks soaked and almost all their stock feed and crops lost.

When the sevenweek cleanup started, more than 50 friends, family and community members chipped in to help.

‘‘It was the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,’’ Mrs Cummings said.

Between her and her one staff member, they did 780 hours of work.

The biggest cost was repairing fencing and replacing baleage, which thankfully, was covered by insurance.

However, the damage to the paddocks and mains supply was not.

She waited seven days for a pump to get rid of the water.

‘‘By that point, the grass had died and it all had to be resown.’’

While the pair had picked themselves up, they were still living with the consequences of the flood — a few paddocks were ‘‘really rough’’ and cows would not eat certain areas of grass due to the buildup of sand underneath.

Despite it all, she was incredibly grateful for her insurers, who made the process as smooth as possible.

She hoped not to experience a flood of that magnitude ever again.

Emergency Management Southland (EMS) acting manager Craig Sinclair was one of seven coordinaters working on the flood response.

‘‘If we can see the potential for EMS to get overwhelmed, that’s when we call for an emergency.’’

The biggest consequences of the floods were loss of winter stock feed, drenched paddocks which needed to be resown, and widespread damage to fences.

Farming close to a river, specifically for Mataura residents, was especially tough, Mr Sinclair said.

‘‘You have to have enough time to shift stock. I believe farmers did have enough notice. thankfully. so there wasn’t a huge amount of loss there.

However, once the feed was recovered, it was ‘‘no good’’, and vets were urging farmers not to use damaged material.

On the upside, there was not a huge demand for winter feed last season, he said.

EMS was still having talks about its processes for flood response.

‘‘We have 27 community groups we talk to on a regular basis and we’re always modifying our processes, it’s always ongoing.’’

With many Southlanders living close to the river and the increasing threat of climate change, he expected similar events to keep occurring.

Southland Federated Farmers vicepresident Bernadette Hunt said the organisation’s role, alongside the Southland Rural Support Trust, was to provide immediate support to get farmers up and running again.

This included the Farmy Army response — whereby volunteers went on to damaged farms to clear debris and rubbish off fences.

A service was also established to help move dairy farm herds to ‘‘foster farms” to be fed and milked while dairy sheds and farms were out of action.