Communities across Southland and Otago have banded together after a week of wild weather left thousands without power for days, flattened trees, and even brought late-year snow.
Parts of Southland and Otago remain in states of emergency, with communities still grappling with the aftermath of more than a week of severe weather.
Emergency Management Southland reports 6250 customers in the region, and 2500 in Otago, remain without power, with crews working to reconnect properties while a “long tail” of outages could last up to a week for some households.
A co-ordinated response is currently under way, with 31 generators circulating across the region to support dairy sheds, community hubs, and essential infrastructure, and five NZ Defence Force soldiers deployed to conduct welfare checks and deliver information to remote communities.
On Monday, the Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery, mark Mitchell, announced a contribution of $150,000 to the Southland and Clutha Mayoral Relief Funds to assist with the recovery.
Provider PowerNet has warned residents that the scale of the storm’s damage was unprecedented, and that the company was currently unable to provide estimates for when electricity will be restored to every property.
Waikaka Station farmer Sharon Patterson said her property had been without electricity for nearly six days after gale-force winds tore through the region on Thursday.
“It’s just amazing how it’s come through right across Southland.”
She and her family have been running three generators to keep their farm and home going, as well as sharing resources with neighbours.
“We had the neighbours showering last night and we were filling water for the other neighbours the day before,” Patterson said.
“You just share it all around, you just get on with it.”
Patterson and her husband had 75 orphaned lambs that rely on electric milk feeders, but the outage forced some quick improvisation.
“We had to plug our two generators together to heat the milk,” she said.
“In the end we made the call, ‘Lambs, you’re now on cold milk,’ and they adapted quite easily. That freed up a generator we could move between our house and our son’s.”
She said the storm’s power exposed the vulnerability of the electrical grid.
“The most important thing this has taught us ... is that we must continue to have fossil fuels, whether we like it or not,” she said.
“Without my gas cooker this morning, we couldn’t have had girdle scones for my tea.”
Patterson praised lineworkers for their tireless efforts despite the uncertainty of when they would be reconnected.
“Getting your power back on is a bit like winning Lotto. When your numbers come up, they come up.”
Further north in Heriot, Avalon Genetics farmer Alan Richardson said the same storm narrowly missed claiming lives.
“My wife went through a gateway checking sheep, and half an hour later a five-tonne tree came down over it,” he said.
“Thankfully, there was no human loss of life, but there were some stock losses. One of my ewes got electrocuted after the lines came down, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Richardson said about 30 large trees fell across fence lines on his property, and power wasn’t restored for five days.
“The trees are that big you can’t go near them with a chainsaw, it’s too dangerous,” he said.
“We’ve got to wait for diggers to take the weight off before we can move them.”
He said while the clean-up was huge, the community response has been humbling.
“It’s really amazing how everyone works together,” Richardson said.
“That’s what gets people through, the community spirit is alive and well.”
Te Anau pharmacist George Batchelor said the town fared comparatively well but still faced logistical challenges after the power cut.
“Our experience was almost purely related to the outage - no infrastructure damage at all,” he said.
“We had a generator and emergency plan ready from after Cyclone Gabrielle, so within 45 minutes of the power going out we had everything running.”
Batchelor said the pharmacy maintained fridge temperatures for medications and later set up a Wi-Fi hub for residents when mobile networks went down.
“I was late to think of it, unfortunately, but we were able to provide fibre connection and run guest Wi-Fi so people could communicate,” he said.
“That’ll go in the next plan.”
He said the town’s calm response made a big difference.
“The people of the town were great, no panicky chaos, no overloading the system,” he said.
“It’s a good opportunity now to evaluate what we did well and where the gaps are.”
Batchelor urged residents to keep a two-week buffer of essential medicines at home in case of future emergencies.
“The restaurants and supermarkets did an amazing job feeding people who couldn’t get fuel to leave. They really stopped it from being a calamity.”
A West Otago dairy farmer, who asked not to be named, said he used his generator to help a neighbour who hadn’t been able to milk for three days.
“There were macrocarpa trees across the lanes and sheds blown out, they’d lost water and the cows hadn’t been milked for days.
“I bought that generator after helping out with Cyclone Gabrielle - it sat in the shed for two years, but it’s been a godsend now.”
Tapanui resident Graeme Edgar said the storm was the most severe he had seen in nearly five decades, with some properties without power for up to four days.
The town’s Four Square supermarket had its roof ripped off but was reopened by 2pm the next day.
“We get easterly storms here and storms from the south … this one was just a freak," he said.
He also commended the efforts of PowerNet lineworkers: “They’ve got an awful lot to do. The phones are probably screaming, and they’re just getting on with it.”
As Richardson put it: “We’ve had tough times before. We choose this life, and we get through it together. Seeing a bit of blue sky today, that helps too.”
Ben Tomsett is a multimedia journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.