South Westland's biggest helicopter operator is expected to be back in the air early this week after being grounded for a month.

The area has just endured its wettest May ever, smashing a 139-year-old record.

Searchers looking just north of Hokitika for one of the rarest vertebrate animals in the country have struck gold.

This year's Wildfoods Festival has been a roaring success, finishing with a $20,000 surplus.

Staff of Signlink Graphics in Hokitika were in clean-up mode this morning after a blaze that took firefighters more than two hours to extinguish.

The fire's broken out in the Signlink Graphics building on Weld Street.

A 20-year-old who died after getting into difficulties while kayaking on a gorge south of Hokitika has been named.

Westland High School students and staff were back in a school routine yesterday, although not from the actual school premises, which remain cordoned off following the fire.

A 17-year-old Hokitika twin has died after drinking heavily at a party on the West Coast.

Don Neale, as his "mischievous pirate" alter ego, the Red Moki from Hoki, stands by a festive Hokitika town entrance sign yesterday.

An early morning fire which ripped through a vacant block of flats in Hokitika is being treated as arson.

The Hokitika Holiday Park, purchased last year by Westland Milk Products, will be bowled to make way for further expansion of the dairy factory site.

Fire investigators were today sifting through the charred remains of a classroom block gutted by fire at Hari Hari early last night.

A Hokitika man arrested in Hokitika overnight for allegedly threatening to kill and threatening to injure with intent to frighten a family member appeared in Westport District Court today.

An intruder made off with meat and stewed fruit after breaking into a Hokitika address on Saturday.

The case of a Hokitika resident who received an unsolicited new cellphone in the mail from south-east Asia recently serves as a warning, police said today.

Bronwyn Sell stays in an ocean-front room on the West Coast.

Around 1500 people in Canterbury are likely to remain without power overnight, after a snow storm battered the region today.

Heavy rain has kept Hokitika residents awake through the night with serious flooding causing many people, including 20 retirement home residents, to be evacuated.

A decade-long project to save endangered giant snails from a West Coast coal mine will finish next year.

A Hokitika bus driver has been charged after six-year-old primary schoolboy became jammed in a bus door and dragged along a road.

A Canadian tramper who fell and dislocated his shoulder, forcing him to crawl for 10 hours to reach shelter, has been rescued eight days after his ordeal began.

Glass and hot embers blasted out of an enclosed fireplace at a Hokitika home last night after a can was accidentally thrown on the fire and exploded.

A rental car driven by a tourist smashed through the plate glass window of a Hokitika automotive workshop, giving workers a fright and causing $40,000 of damage.

A Hokitika woman caught drink-driving at four times the limit had a baby in the car with her, police said today.

A desperate plea by 15 bystanders for passing jetboats to rescue a 30-year-old struggling in the chilly waters of the Hokitika Gorge were ignored by the boaties.

Specialist equipment from around the world has started arriving in Hokitika for the fitout on Westland Milk Products' $102 million nutritions drier project.

The details of an "appalling" incident of a child riding on the roof of a Dunedin vehicle on a West Coast road will be sent to Dunedin police today for further investigation.