Wairarapa flood damage reports still coming in

One South Wairarapa station is reported to have lost an estimated 30 per cent of its topsoil on grazing blocks and 16 culverts in last week's severe rainstorm.

Authorities are still assessing how much devastation the storm caused as reports of damage continue to trickle in, especially from coastal areas of South Wairarapa.

A huge sweep of the coast was battered in the storm, which brought down hundreds of slips, wiped out bridges and fences, tore away culverts and stripped top soil.

At Ngawihi, near the North Island's southern tip, tonnes of soil and boulders came hurtling down, burying trailers and bulldozers used to tow fishing vessels out to sea.

Further towards Cape Palliser a bridge was swept away, isolating those living nearby, and even though water levels have dropped, access is still restricted to vehicles capable of fording the stream.

The large coastal stations along the stretch are estimated to have suffered millions of dollars of damage with chains of fencing flattened, farm tracks obliterated by slips and trees undermined and toppled.

South Wairarapa District councillor Dianne Phelps, who lives on the coast, said the damage was worse than that caused by floods in February and August last year.

The storm had come in from the east bringing "18 inches (45cm) of rain or more".

Mrs Phelps said strangely the storm had hit some areas and virtually missed others at intervals along the coast. The only positive had been that houses had not been damaged, she said.

Mrs Phelps said she has lived on the coast for 25 years and was hopeful that the storm was a "one-off".

United Future candidate for Wairarapa Graeme Reeves is calling on the Government to urgently help out families on the coast hit by the storm and floods.

He intends to write to Civil Defence Minister George Hawkins and Wairarapa MP Georgina Beyer urging swift action to help families get back on their feet.

Mr Reeves said the South Wairarapa District Council was understaffed and under-resourced to cope "with a disaster on this scale".

"The people of this district need urgent access to machinery and manpower to get their land back into production".

But the council's chief executive Griff Page said to claim the council was understaffed and under-resourced was "an exaggeration", and that council contractors had been immediately dispatched to the problem areas after the storm.

Mr Page said the reality was that climate change and shifting weather patterns were likely to bring storms such as the one that hit last week more frequently.

- NZPA