Richard Hunter stands in front of one of the many areas on his property where broken and fallen trees are scattered. Photo / RNZ, Calvin Samuel
By Charlotte Cook of RNZ
A first responder and local farmer believes it’s a miracle no one was hurt in the devastating storm that hit Clutha, but he’s warning there will be injuries in the cleanup.
At its peak, communications, power and water were off across Southland and Clutha, creating a nightmare situation for farmers.
One of those living in the nightmare is Clutha Valley Volunteer Fire Brigade chief Richard Hunter.
While driving around the property, he points out the powerlines that lead to nowhere, just laying like a dead snake in the grass.
The lines come from the transformer that is now crushed beneath the 100-year-old trees.
Hunter has hundreds of trees like this around his property.
He looks at the mountain of work and what those downed trees mean for him.
“Overwhelmed. Daunting, yeah, wondering where to start.”
He’s just one of the local farmers staring down the barrel of months of work.
The scale of destruction in this area means you can’t drive 100 metres without seeing a giant tree down.
The first step for most of them is stock proofing - or reinstalling the fences. For Hunter, kilometres needing replacing.
“Yeah, so there’s big holes in all the tree blocks.
“Really, it’s the tree devastation that’s the main thing for me now, and the fencing.
“It’s amazing what a digger can do in a day, though... move the trees, you know.
“Tidy up the old fence, and so you have got somewhere to work with.”
But as he drives around the hilly property covered in carnage, the thing he kept saying was that it was a miracle that no one got hurt on Thursday.
Although he said the recovery might be a different story.
“That’s the other thing. It’s, you know, there’s all those, we call them widowmakers, hanging up in the trees.”
Many of the trees have snapped halfway up, and are now caught in the tall branches, waiting to come down.
Hunter was also concerned for the “chainsaw cowboys” who try and do it themselves and will end up hurt.
The other worry, he said, is mental health.
“It’s going to be quite a major, it’s going to be ongoing, like we were shaping up to have been having quite a good season...prices are quite good, weather conditions were quite good, yeah, but this is a bit of a game changer, but we’ll get over it.
“Yeah, it’s not, it’s not going to be the end of the world.”
But the community through Clutha Valley is a tight network, in the immediate aftermath held together largely by the local sparky company.
Jared Cowley and his team worked for more than 20 hours straight getting generators between the dairy farms to ensure they could all get their milking done.
“I actually counted the phone calls just on the Thursday, and it was over 300, so yeah.”
His team would bring the generator into the farm, wire it into the switchboard, wait for the milking to be done, before unwiring it and moving to the next desperate farmer.
“The boys have been going from stupid o’clock, four o’clock in the morning, till after midnight.”
“Obviously, people would like to keep the generator there for more, because when we take it away, it means there’s no stock water.
“But they’ve known that their neighbour was in the same or worse boat.
“Everyone’s been great.”
One of those very grateful dairy farmers was Greg Foster.
He’s got 600 hectares in Rongohere ... or as he calls it, “out in the boonies in the back of Clydevale”.
He also went on a mission to get generators.
“Basically, one of the cobbers down the road.
“He needed a generator... We basically got together, met down the road...he took a tractor so we could push all the trees off the way... we took three chainsaws.
“The guys up in Cromwell met us halfway with them... we swapped the generators over halfway and headed back.
“So I think we’re up and running on the first cow shed by midnight.
“It’s bloody good.”
He said it was a desperate time for farmers, but comparing horror stories over a pint and a good old stew helped ease the pain.
“[We talked about] just the carnage, basically, who’s worse off and who needed a hand still and stuff like that... and just probably the first hot meal for about four days.”
Most of Clutha Valley was still without power on Tuesday, but aside from some stock losses and sleepless nights, they had committed to continue as they started - riding out the long tail of this storm together.
-RNZ