Heroic efforts as storm hits

Kawakawa fire chief Wayne Martin, right and his deputy Annette Wynyard take a break at the fire station. Photo/John Stone

When the storm came to cause devastation across Northland up stepped the region's police, fire and ambulance staff, volunteers and electricity linesmen, with heroic efforts to keep people safe.

The worst of the storm, which brought winds up to 160km/h and heavy rain, should be over by today, but on Tuesday and yesterday, the dedicated workers were out in atrocious conditions ensuring the storm caused no casualties and as little damage as possible.

New Zealand's most northern police officer, Tracee Knowler, said when the windy weather battered the Far North locals and volunteers banded together to help each other. The worst of the weather smashed Houhora and Pukenui between 1pm and 9pm on Tuesday with trees and power lines falling.

"I was driving along the straights with the falling trees and the power lines hit the road in front of me. It was quite scary."

But what impressed her the most was how volunteer firefighters, forestry workers and locals pulled together to clear roads of debris.

Forestry workers used their chainsaws to cut up a fallen gum tree to free a tour bus that was stuck just outside Ngataki Marae on Tuesday afternoon.

Ms Knowler said the bus driver had little warning and did well to keep the bus on the road as the falling tree smashed through the windscreen. No one on the bus was hurt and they waited at the marae for a short time until they were collected by another passing tour bus.

"I was so appreciative of the community help. There were so many that were prepared to help out at a drop of a hat," she said.

Kawakawa fire chief Wayne Martin said 16 firefighters and three operational support staff had worked tirelessly since Tuesday, attended to weather-related callouts.

The station attended to 12 callouts from 7.30am on Tuesday to about midday yesterday.

Lines staff from Far North company Top Energy and Whangarei/Dargaville company Northpower risked life and limb climbing up power poles at all hours and in appalling conditions to restore power as quickly as possible to the almost 20,000 properties that had electricity cut by the storm across the region.

Northpower Glove and Barrier Foreman Jason Boyd and his lines crew were yesterday attempting to fix an outage at Pataua South.

"The weather is atrocious. We are trying our best to get the power on but at the moment the weather is winning out on both coasts," Mr Boyd said.

"We had the head broken out of a pole which ultimately means a pole replacement. We actually needed a four-wheel-drive bucket truck to get there because it is up on a ridge but since it was so wet we couldn't even manage that to carry out a temporary repair.

"The wind was up to 130-140km/h an hour so I made the call this afternoon to pull out for safety reasons. I've never worked in winds that strong before and it was just too dangerous to attempt to carry on. So we've got no option now but to wait until the wind dies down and then we'll get back in there and sort it out."

Northpower had more than 100 staff in the field late yesterday assessing storm damage and implementing repairs due to the worst storm the network has experienced in the past seven years.