Cold snap's damage cost clocking up

It will be days before the cost of the week-long cold snap can be counted as slips, snow and flooding continued to cause problems yesterday on roads in the greater Dunedin area.

About 27 Dunedin streets and roads remained closed yesterday.

Dunedin City Council roading engineer Peter Standring said roading contractors were working in the wider city area, from the Strath-Taieri, where they were clearing more than 1m of snow, to the Otago Peninsula, where they were clearing slips.

While it continued to rain and snow, contractors were still in ''damage-control mode''.

''Fix-it mode'' would come later, he said.

He estimated clearance and assessment would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. As the land had not had a chance to dry out, further slips and rock falls were possible, so motorists needed to take care. Efforts were being made to clear slips as fast as possible, with the Blanket Bay slip mostly cleared yesterday and Portobello Rd reopened last night.

However, Upper Junction Rd would remain closed for about a month and the Harington Point Rd slip was still moving, so could not be cleared till it stopped. Debris from the Brown St slip would not be removed until the engineers gave clearance. Affected residents had other ways to get off their properties, he said.

Homeowners concerned about slips on their property should contact their insurance company and the Earthquake Commission.

The amount of water lying on the city's low areas meant many of those on septic-tank systems were unable to flush their toilets due to flooded tanks.

Dave Brownlie, of Drainage Services, said surface water was flooding septic tanks, filling them up and, until the water drained away, it was hard to fix the problem.

The length of this week's wet spell meant problems were worse than in other years and were affecting people from the Taieri to Aramoana, Waitati and Harwood, he said.

- rebecca.fox@odt.co.nz