A damaged road in Eskdale, north of Napier. Photo / RNZ / Tess Brunton
By RNZ
There was cheering and clapping in the streets of Napier as power came on in parts of the city yesterday, the mayor says.
Some homes were also being assessed across the region, with some residents beginning to return if they were safe.
About 30 per cent of the city has power back on - mainly in the CBD and surrounding suburbs.
But Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise asked people to be conservative with their power use.
“My heart goes out to the rest of our communities that still do not have any power. Those that have power, just be careful with your usage - don’t go chucking on your dishwashers and your clothes dryers. It is a temporary fix they have put in place and we don’t want to overload it.
“For the rest of our city, we do still in fact need to conserve our water usage ... minimise flushing of toilets, minimise showers... Please, please, please, no one jump out with your hose and start trying to clean up silt.”
For those in need of LPG gas, there was plenty of supply and deliveries were under way, Wise said.
For those trying to find loved ones, Wise said “don’t panic” and advised them to contact the police.
“A lot of it is simply coming down to the fact that people are not contactable ... we do know there are lots of people who still don’t have power, their phones aren’t charged, so they just can’t be gotten hold of.”
She expected an update from police on the number of those uncontactable today.
As of yesterday afternoon, there were about 900 people housed in Napier evacuation centres, Wise said.
Some people had been able to return home yesterday.
“As we move into the recovery phase, that is when we really start looking at those people who need longer-term condition.”
A council-owned holiday camp would be available for people to stay in.
Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence said there had been a step change in its Cyclone Gabrielle response in the last 24 hours.
Operational Readiness team leader Edaan Lennan said in some areas, the response had moved from the immediate survival mode to better understanding the impact of events and getting people back in their homes.
Wairoa still remains largely cut off with limited communication, and the focus is continuing to get essential supplies to communities there, where Civil Defence and the New Zealand Defence Force are on the ground.
Helicopters will be sent out again today on reconnaissance missions there and in other rural areas to survey roads, transmission lines, stopbanks, water levels in townships and slips on farmland.
Napier MP Stuart Nash is co-ordinating a drop of 25,000 newsletters which will be distributed around Napier and surrounding areas.
In Hastings, there was better access to power and roading links heading south were largely intact.
Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst told Morning Report people from around the region had been driving in to make use of the power supply.
“There was a five-kilometre line of traffic held up yesterday, the expressway between Napier and Hastings, so yes, people were coming over for a hot shower and to recharge their phones and batteries etc,” she said.
While she said it was wonderful to have the expressway opened, she asked people to stay at home and only travel if they needed to, to avoid putting more pressure on the roads.
She said the main concern currently was reaching out to rural communities and making sure everybody was accounted for.
“We’re getting that intel today. I’ll be up in a chopper with the chair of the regional council, just to see how everybody is faring.
“We’ve got our rural community board working really hard, we know that we’ve got cut-off and isolated communities who haven’t got the necessities of life and so we’re getting fuel up to them. Also, connections through Starlink were dropped off yesterday to various parts of our rural community by chopper.”
In rural areas like Rissington, home to 1500 - 2000 people, communities had been forming groups and committees to identify the needs of their residents, Hazlehurst said.
“Everybody’s compiling lists now - we’ve got a whole team now looking after them, meeting regularly with them.
“I can contact them all through their satellites, so we had a very good Zoom meeting yesterday and we’ll be doing that all across the whole of the Hastings district.”
Hazlehurst said they had last night made contact with two communities they hadn’t heard from until then.
“I got some word that our people at Lake Tūtira were okay, but they were the ones that we couldn’t get hold of, so we need to get a satellite link into them so they can communicate. They’re all working together, supporting each other, but we need to get supplies to them.
“The other one is Keruru, and so that is another area that we hadn’t heard from and that was our concern. So now, once again, we’ll get all their needs in.”
While there were still thousands of people unaccounted for, Hazlehurst said she was “very hopeful that most of our people are okay”.
“The 3000 responses to police looking for whānau and family and loved ones, it’s pretty devastating,” she said. “I think there are about 200 people already who have notified to say that they’ve found their person.”
Hazlehurst said there were still 37,000 people without power across the region, making contact challenging.
“Can I just say how tirelessly the power teams have been working, and everyone, Civil Defence, Fenz, Police, just to connect everybody up? But there’s a lot of people on that list to get through,” she said. “We’ve got more police arriving today, more police to support everybody, and that’s fantastic.
National Emergency Management Agency advice:
· Please donate - how you can help the victims of Cyclone Gabrielle; NZ Herald teams up with Red Cross
· If you have been unable to contact a friend or family member - or if you have fled the storm and want others to know you are safe - you can post a message here on the NZ Herald’s community noticeboard.
- RNZ
Emergency services were called to the scene about 8.30pm.