Wild weather in Rotorua has brought down trees including one that killed a woman in a car. ...
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
0:00
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
1x
Chapters
descriptions off, selected
captions settings, opens captions settings dialog
captions off, selected
This is a modal window.
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
End of dialog window.
This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.
NZ Defence $2b Helicopter Spend, Trump’s Global Influence & Mental Health | NZ Herald News Update
UP NEXT:
Autoplay in
4
Disable Autoplay
Cancel Video
Wild weather in Rotorua has brought down trees including one that killed a woman in a car.
NOW PLAYING • Wild weather in Rotorua
Wild weather in Rotorua has brought down trees including one that killed a woman in a car. ...
The condition of the 150-year-old oak tree that fell and crushed a local woman will form part of the continuing police inquiry into her death.
That comes as it's revealed about 10 other trees in the Rotorua district are currently braced to maintain their structure.
The tree, known as Spencer's Oak, split in two during Friday's storm, falling on to the Te Arawa House building and across Amohia St, crushing the car being driven by pre-school teacher Trish Butterworth.
A tree has destroyed the kitchen roof at Paruaharanui Marae. ...
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
0:00
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
1x
Chapters
descriptions off, selected
captions settings, opens captions settings dialog
captions off, selected
This is a modal window.
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
End of dialog window.
This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.
NZ Defence $2b Helicopter Spend, Trump’s Global Influence & Mental Health | NZ Herald News Update
UP NEXT:
NOW PLAYING • Tree destroys Rotorua marae kitchen roof
A tree has destroyed the kitchen roof at Paruaharanui Marae. ...
The council was warned by an arborist in recent months of concerns with the tree and responded by getting an inspection done by its contractor. In late September/early October the bracing on the tree was replaced and branches removed.
Senior Sergeant Dennis Murphy of Rotorua said police were carrying out a fatality inquiry on behalf of the coroner.
"This involves gathering information from the scene, witnesses and experts.
"The inquiry will include all aspects of the incident, including the state of the tree.
"The process started immediately and is ongoing. It is not going to be over in a week."
Council acting chief executive Craig Tiriana said the council would co-operate fully with the inquiry.
"We are in the process of gathering all relevant information."
He said about 10 other trees in the district were currently braced to maintain their structure.
Image 1 of 21: A woman is dead after a tree fell on her car on Amohia St in Rotorua today. The tree damaged a building also. Photo/Ben Fraser
These include trees at the Rotorua lakefront, Government Gardens, Koutu Rd, Jean Batten Park and Stoney Point at Tarawera.
"Braced trees have been checked in recent months by council contractors and these, along with others, will be assessed again as part of our post-storm checks."
Meanwhile, some residents are looking at months of repairs to storm damage while others have taken it as a wake-up call to be more prepared for emergencies.
A local family who were left heartbroken after a 10m tree crashed through the roof of their marae are waiting to get an engineer in to assess the damage.
Ida Brailey, who lives next to Paruaharanui Marae, said the family hoped to get repairs under way as soon as possible.
"We've organised a fundraising committee and have had a couple of meetings but we are still waiting for the engineer to come so we can assess the damage.
"We have gotten over the shock of it, the damage doesn't look so bad now the tree has been taken out."
The marae was not insured for such damage.
Ida Brailey, (left), and Pipiana Brailey survey the damage after a tree smashed throught the kitchen roof at Paruaharanui Marae.
A Western Heights resident who was without power for nearly three days said she would look at improving her emergency kit for the future.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said her house lost electricity when a power line was brought down on Thursday night.
Her family spent hundreds of dollars buying food and travelling to a family member's house so her children could have hot showers.
"It wasn't a pleasant experience. We had candles but didn't have much else in the way of an emergency kit. We were just fortunate that we had a reserve of money to rely on. But not everybody has that luxury.
"It has definitely made us consider how well-equipped our emergency kit is."
She said Unison was notified of the outage on Thursday night, but it wasn't resolved until Sunday morning.
"I am still disgruntled about the experience because nothing happened for two days. Despite having a live power line on the footpath, Unison didn't remove it until Saturday night.
"It took them five minutes to determine it was a personal line, not area line like they originally thought. Once that was determined a local electrician was able to come the next morning and it was fixed in an hour.
"I appreciate Unison was busy but we were without power for three days when we didn't need to be. I think better processes need to be in place for times like this."
Unison relationship manager Danny Gough acknowledged the call centre had not responded as quickly as possible and apologised for the inconvenience.
"It is an external call centre that also works for a number of other companies so while they had extra staff working, it was during a time when tens of thousands of customers lost power.
"We will be sitting down with the call centre to see how we can do things better in the future."
Gough said Rotorua experienced the most severe outages, with about 3500 customers affected on Friday.
"Our focus was prioritising our efforts on areas that would restore the most customers.
"All but 1200 were restored by Friday night and we were down to 50-odd by the end of Saturday. Those remaining customers were restored by Sunday afternoon."
