Rotorua on the mend from Friday's storm

Rotorua is on the mend after braving the storm on Friday which caused fallen trees, flooding and power outages.

A Rotorua Lakes Council spokesperson said in a statement yesterdaythe clean-up following Friday's storm would continue this next week.

"Continued care is urged on roads throughout the Rotorua district in the coming days due to the ongoing risk of slips and treefalls due to ground saturation," the statement said.

They said forest users should also take extra care with tracks affected by fallen trees and debris, and risk of further treefalls.

Work to clear tracks will be ongoing.

They said the winds posed the biggest problem, keeping crews busy dealing with fallen trees and debris throughout the city and district, and prompting some temporary road closures.

In some places, fallen trees were cleared enough so that roads could remain open, but some road shoulders remained closed and clean-up of these areas would be completed during the week, the statement said.

Fulton Hogan road crews dealt with 37 reported fallen trees and branches on Friday.

They were stood down over the weekend other than to deal with new jobs and responded to two new reported tree falls, on Te Waerenga Rd and in Rerewhakaaitu, during the weekend.

An excavator was needed to clear a large fallen tree in Whittaker Rd, Koutu.

The road crews will work this week to clear away remaining debris and fallen trees from roadsides, and to check the roading network.

The statement said generators had to be used to run 10 local sewerage pump stations in the Okere, Otaramarae, Okawa Bay, Tikitere and Mourea areas overnight Friday, but all systems were operating as normal again from about 9am Saturday when power was restored to affected areas.

"While inflows were greater than normal, wastewater and stormwater systems coped well during the storm."

They said a small sewer overflow from a manhole on Mataikotare Rd on Saturday, which occurred due to power outages, was cleaned up and posed no environmental risk.

"There was some damage to paving at the Lakefront but the extent of that has yet to be assessed."

They said about 90 calls regarding storm-related issues were received by Rotorua Lakes Council's after-hours call centre on Friday and Saturday.

Meanwhile, Unison crews in Rotorua were working hard over the weekend to get residents who lost power reconnected.

However, a few still remained without power today.

Unison relationship manager Danny Gough said in a statement on Saturday afternoon about 800 customers had had their power restored but there will still about 400 customers without.

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

According to the Unison website todayabout 5pm, 11 customers were affected by an outage in the Rotorua area.

In the statement, Gough said the main issue had been the volume of work combined with the technically challenging nature of the repairs, and the difficult terrain the crews have had to access.

"The severe weather and wind-borne material has taken a lot of lines down and the damage to the network has been significant."

He said some customers in Hawke's Bay and Rotorua might be experiencing hot water issues.

"We understand how frustrating having no power and no hot water will be for the final few
who are facing issues since the storm hit on Thursday evening.

"However, we are working as fast and as safely as we can to fix the damage from the storm and have brought in crews from other regions to help."

Customers still without power are advised to check Unison's list of outages for details
including expected restoration time: www.unison.co.nz/outages.

Gough said volumes through the call centre remained high but if customers were without power and not listed on the website, they should call 0800 2 UNISON (0800 2 86476) to report it.

MetService meteorologist Brian Mercer said Rotorua Airport got 64.6mm of rainfall on Friday.

He said this was a lot compared with surrounding areas.

Mercer said Whakatane airport got 44mm and Tauranga airport 16.4mm over the same time.

He said on Friday there were north easterly winds, the strongest gust was 95km/h about midday.

Mercer said while the winds stayed strong they did ease on Friday afternoon.

He said Rotorua had moderate to fresh winds on Saturday.

There was about 14mm of rainfall at the airport throughout Saturday and most of that was at night.

Mercer said this week was, "certainly looking a little bit better than that".

He said todaythere would be a few showers in the morning which would put a bit of a dampener on the day, but today and tomorrow would be the best days of this week.

Mercer said there would probably be a couple of spots of rain on Wednesday in the afternoon and night.

From tomorrowonwards things would warm up, he said.

Tomorrow and Tuesday's high was expected to be 25C. It was expected to be a bit cooler on Wednesday, but still around 24C, and 23C for Thursday, he said.