Emergency Management Southland (EMS) says it is likely the state of emergency in Southland and Clutha will remain in place into next week.
- Key priorities are:
- Power to lifelines (telecommunications, water, wastewater)
- Ensure community and animal welfare needs are being actioned
- Efficiently distribute and track generators
- Royal New Zealand Air Force C-130J Hercules arrived on Saturday afternoon with staff to support the response and large generators for restoring the telecommunications network.
- Other generators available are being prioritised to critical services initially and then will be redistributed as power is restored.
- These critical services are for waste and drinking water treatment, healthcare services, supermarkets and fuel services.
- There is some misinformation about fuel scarcity in Southland – this is incorrect, there are healthy supplies of fuel, and these can be resupplied as needed.
- Five percent of the nearly 200 retail fuel sites in Southland and Otago remain without power (25 Oct 25). As soon as power is restored these sites will once again serve their communities.
- A reminder to please check on your neighbours and pass on information where needed.
- The rail network is operational. However, railway crossings in Woodlands, Longbush, Rimu Road and Steel Road near Invercargill are out. Signals have been covered and trains will travel at 10kph through those areas.
Emergency managers say it is lucky no-one was killed in a fierce storm that lashed Southland and South Otago, knocking out power, water and communications.
PowerNet has restored power to all but 9500 customers, down from 50,000, although the company warned it could take a further five days before electricity was back on in some areas, because of the damage caused by Thursday's wild winds.
Emergency Management Southland controller Lucy Hicks said it was "very, very lucky" that no-one died in the fast-moving storm.
"This one was the speediest that I've ever come across," she said. "We went from an orange warning to a red within about 15 minutes.
"MetService was expecting it to be an orange, within 15 minutes we had 170ks out on the Foveaux [Strait]. That is big and unusual.
"I think we all, collectively, responded really quickly to a really fast-moving situation.
"It's always pedal to the metal, but you are desperate to find situational awareness. That was tricky with limited power and the comms as well."
PowerNet chief executive Paul Blue said hundreds of power poles were down across the region.
"The devastation that happened has snapped many poles, so there are some customers out there that will take quite some significant time to get on," he said. "We are doing everything we can, we will get to you."
About 50 cell towers were off-line as a result of the storm, down from 130, Blue said.
"The big focus, certainly for me, has been to surge generators into the area," he said. "We've got to be realistic that the amount of disruption that has occurred in the network means that it could take up to a week to fully restore [power]."
"We'll keep bringing generators in and people need to look for a commercial option as suppliers bring more generators in as well."
Emergency Management Southland was distributing smaller generators to farms.
A state of local emergency remained in place for the Southland and Clutha districts.
National Emergency Management Agency staff and Defence Force personnel were supporting Southland Civil Defence chiefs.
The Clutha District Council advised this morning about 3500 customers were still without power across the district.
"This is 6000 less than yesterday morning, and we want to thank and congratulate PowerNet for their tireless efforts."
"Powernet's focus today is to reach more of our outlying communities. They have extra manpower coming to assist in many of our towns including Inch Clutha, Kaitangata, Warepa, Clinton, Clydevale, Milton, Taieri Mouth, Toko Mouth and Hillend, Owaka, waihola, Lawrence, Lovells Flat, Waitahuna."
Boil water notices have been issued for many in the district, because "communications coming from many of our water treatment plants has been limited at times and we cannot be certain that water is consistently compliant".
Emergency Management Southland said the state of emergency put in place due to extensive power cuts in the wake of Thursday's storm would remain until the middle of the coming week.
Controller Vibhuti Chopra said the agency's key priorities were restoring power and distributing generators.
"Yesterday afternoon, around midday, there were 12,000 connections still down; this morning, it's 8000, so they've worked well there. For cell towers, it was 92 down yesterday, it's 50 now, so they're working to restore that, they're bringing in crews from across the country," she said.
"As PowerNet is repairing, they're having to cut out some power again and then re-restore it, which makes the water and wastewater situation up and down a little bit, but it's all under control."
Blue this afternoon said additional power crews from around the country were heading to Southland to assist.
“We have got thousands of customers back on in the last few days, but there is still plenty more to do.
“We’ve called on our colleagues around the country and they have willingly offered support. Crews from outside the region started arriving yesterday and will continue to head south on Monday and Tuesday – this will give us a total of 220 field staff available.
“We are extremely grateful for this help because the job is immense and we are still getting reports of lines down, broken poles and trees on lines.”
Blue earlier said restoration efforts would slow as crews addressed more extensive damage.
Blue said the electricity supplier had nearly 150 people on the ground working to reconnect cut-off homes and cell towers in its territory.
He asked for the public's patience as crews worked through the more challenging repairs.
"The outages that we will be trying to resolve start to become the ones that take more time.
There will be instances where, while power has gone back on, sometimes we will might need to turn it off or order to make [areas] safe and to get other people on as well - particularly in some of the areas where there has been some fairly widespread devastation around trees going into poles and wires."
Blue said the company was now prioritising restoring power to cellphone towers and rural addresses - particularly where dairy farms were located.
"We now move to looking - at a more granular level - at what is the damage and we will turn on the ones that have minimal damage. The ones that have more extensive damage, they're the ones that will take longer. We are working closely with a lot of the telco providers around what sites we will be [able] to liven up - and where we aren't - they will put generators."
EMS group controller Lucy Hicks said nearly 40 generators were flown into the area in an Air Force Hercules to help power up cellphone towers on Saturday afternoon.
"The network of cell towers is quite wide. About 130 have been impacted by the storm across Southland and Otago. [Repair crews] have reduced that number down, but there's still quite a few to go, and so those generators are primarily focusing on getting those cell towers back up and running."
She said 13 additional emergency management staff were aboard the flight to relieve teams who had been working "around the clock" since Thursday last week.
Southland Mayor Rob Scott says the district is getting to "the tail end of the main issues".
He is heading west to Orepuki, then up to Ohai and Nightcaps to check on all of those communities today.
"We're still focusing on just making sure that everyone's kind of in good shape and our communities are all being looked after," he said.
Earth Sciences (formerly Niwa) has warned that heavy snow, rainfall, powerful winds, and plunging temperatures will hit the South Island on Monday.
MetService has issued a raft of severe weather warnings, taking in most of the middle and upper South Island and the lower to middle North Island.
Scott said that was something the council would be preparing for today.
Mobile coverage disrupted
The head of the Telecommunications Forum says people attempting to dial 111 in areas with disrupted mobile coverage may need to wait up to 50 seconds for a connection.
Southland residents have reported problems getting through to emergency responders after last week's severe weather shut down nearly 130 cellphone towers.
Paul Brislen says crews have been restoring up to 25 towers each day.
He said a recent issue in Australia showed certain devices were slow to connect to emergency networks.
He said the problem has not been fully tested in New Zealand, but emergency callers should stay on the line.
Meanwhile, the Otago Regional Council said dairy farmers in areas hit by power cuts could be forced to make the call to dump milk stocks.
They said they did not have concerns if milk had to be discharged into effluent storage - or on to land - but farmers must notify the council for follow up.
Acting general manager environmental delivery Simon Wilson said if effluent ponds were full, farmers should only dispose of milk onto land where tile drains and waterways would not be affected by runoff.
He said the council had postponed dairy farm inspections until November 3 but would reassess the situation early next week.
