The day after a violent storm tore through North Canterbury, the community is assessing the damage and beginning the long clean-up.
Mike Thorpe travelled to ground zero to see the aftermath and how they’re coping.
There’s a new carpet smell in the two-bedroom staff home near Mouse Point that Holly Jackson is showing me through. There’s also an enormous pine tree that’s come crashing through the lounge, pushing the ceiling, trusses and Pink Batts into the living area.
Pine needles protrude through the building paper and, unscathed, a poster on the wall says “thank god”. Apt, given that the freshly cleaned home was only days away from having a new tenant – but when the wind came knocking nobody was home.
It is one of four staff houses on the farm.
“Two of them are severely damaged,” says Jackson.
The second did have a tenant but he was at work when a blue gum crashed through the roof and front windows.
A third has damage to the garage and an upturned, now roofless sleepout.
Still, Jackson sounds upbeat as she tallies up the damage, counting her and her staff lucky.
“Very lucky. They all made the right decision to let the cows out of the shed and hunker down together away from any falling objects until everything calmed down and then went home,” says Jackson.
She and her husband are 50/50 sharemilkers on two farms with nearly 1200 cows. The other farm, where they live, lost almost an entire four-bay shed to the wind. The corrugated iron from that was last seen headed east.
In one of their larger paddocks an entire ten-span irrigator pivot lies on its side. Dozens of century-old trees are strewn through both farms.
“Plenty of firewood, bonfires and marshmallows galore,” says Jackson with a smile.
It would be the most used joke in Hurunui today.
“There won’t be a shortage of firewood in the basin for a few years,” says John Faulkner, dairy farmer, Ecan councillor and Culverden resident of 25 years, as we chat on the main street.
It’s followed by a polite chuckle – not because it’s funny but because the alternative to laughing isn’t nearly as appetising.
The reality is the district has been hammered, and while the winds that tore through the rural settlements of Culverden, Rotherham and Waiau have subsided, the clean-up will be a long one.
I ask Faulkner if he knows roughly what percentage of farms have sustained damage?
“From what I understand 100%. Some more than others. Some have lost four pivots out of six. I heard one farmer possibly has had his whole farm wiped out. I don’t know yet.”
He doesn’t know because communications through much of the district are compromised, as is power. Linesmen are working across North Canterbury to repair the widespread damage.
“Trying to get in contact with each other, it’s a bit of a hit and miss thing at the moment,” says Faulkner.
For that reason, he’s cautious about suggesting they were lucky. The fact is, they don’t know if their community is unscathed.
The road into Culverden, State Highway 7, is closed from the SH1 turnoff at Waipara. The alternative route is much longer, coming in through the northern access to Waiau.
Coming from Christchurch, motorists cross the Waimakariri, Hurunui and Waiau Rivers. All are running virtually from bank to bank. All are the same brown colour, filled with silt and dirt but looking like something from within Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
The chorus through the undulating hills through to the valley floor is that of chainsaws.
Faulkner expects that to be the sound of summer – it will go on that long.
“Days and days. Months, I would say.”
The impact on agriculture is expected to take longer and be harder to fix.
“I was just on a call and I’d heard that there’s probably around between 500 to 600 pivot spans that need repairing, just for our little basin. That’s a lot of work,” says Federated Farmers’ North Canterbury president Bex Green.
She’s not exactly sure what that means in dollar terms, but a rough estimate would be close to $20 million. The length of time to repair or replace is less exact.
“They reckoned probably early next year. We’re meant to be irrigating at the nicest time of year and during spring, that’s when you want to be growing your grass as much as possible – when you’ve got the sun. Then you’re heading into your driest period in autumn next year and over summer. It’s not an ideal time not to have irrigators going,” says Green, who watched her own irrigator get picked up and twisted in the wind.
The impact on the district’s dairy farmers will mean that they’re unable to hit their peak milking seasons.
“We’ve just started mating, so we’re trying to keep condition on cows so that they can stay pregnant over that dry period, grow grass and really supply the milk that we’d like to.
“Taking a big hit to milk production isn’t going to go down well, especially when you’ve got a high payout and you want to be producing that milk.”
Green says there are also many farm buildings that will require repair or replacement.
There will need to be some repairs to nerve endings, too. Thursday’s storm shook virtually everyone.
“It was like the Twister movie. It was carnage. I’ve seen people nearly break down – that’s how scared they were,” says Green.
“A good hour and a half where you just couldn’t do anything. You’re just sitting inside your house watching your house shake, the windows shake and dust flying everywhere.”
Faulkner says he’s not seen anything like it in the 25 years he’s been here.
“We’ve seen some pretty big winds, quite challenging ones. But I’d say that from what I can remember of the news when I was a young guy and they had that storm in 1975, it’s probably fairly similar.”
But this community has seen tough times before and they’ve pulled together and bounced back. Nobody is suggesting it’ll be any different this time around.
“We’ve got a fantastic community. I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” says Faulkner.
Green agrees. From drought to quakes to saving their local police force.
“We’re well versed in adversity, basically.”
And there’s one other thing.
“One of the positives, I guess, is that we’ve all got firewood for years,” says Green.
Mike Thorpe is a senior journalist for the Herald, based in Christchurch. He has been a broadcast journalist across television and radio for 20 years and joined the Herald in August 2024.