However, those speeding clock hands are not the case for everyone. The thousands of residents across the Clutha district and Southland who took last Thursday’s westerly squall fairly and squarely in the face will have felt like someone has actually slowed their clocks down.
With a fresh layer of Labour Day snow compounding the struggle without electricity or cellphones, and being blocked in by trees and broken fences and buildings, it might have appeared to some like they were stuck in treacle trying to progress repairs in the most demanding of circumstances and spending cold nights made longer without power.
More than 8000 PowerNet customers throughout Clutha and Southland are still waiting to have their electricity supplies reconnected, down from about 50,000 after the storm on Thursday. Lines teams from around New Zealand are helping with the work.
However, the company estimates it could take another five days or more before electricity returns to some locations, given the damage to poles and lines. The easy fixes have largely been carried out.
In some of the worst-affected places, generators of all sizes have been deployed to ease the powerless situation. The Defence Force has flown in about 40 generators and Emergency Management Southland has sent more than 30 to support crucial infrastructure and dairy farms. Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell says more are on the way.
Farmers are also sharing generators with one another to try to keep the region’s dairying operations running. It is not only distressing for the farmers to lose income and see their milking herds suffering but also upsetting for their cows to be in such discomfort.
It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature that when disaster strikes somewhere else, the initial shock and concern about what has happened fades within days. Those elsewhere in the country not having to live with the many months of aftershocks after the Canterbury earthquakes soon moved on. The same was the case for people not immediately wrapped up in the devastation of Hawke’s Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle.
On Monday, Mr Mitchell announced the windstorm had reached the threshold of being classified as a medium-scale event. As a consequence, the government was contributing $100,000 to mayoral relief funds — $75,000 to the Southland region and $25,000 to the Clutha district. The Ministry for Primary Industries has also contributed an extra $50,000, to be split evenly between Southland and Clutha.
Relief funding from other government agencies is likely to also follow. Mr Mitchell made it clear that disbursements to mayoral relief funds is a stop-gap measure designed to fill an immediate need faster than payouts from insurance companies and other sources can arrive.
Locals are not impressed, however, and seem insulted by such sums. Comments range from "pathetic" to "whoopty Dooo! That’s morning tea paid for" to "talk about out of touch" and "this government is such a joke".
Others recognise the initial funding is to help communities start to bounce back and is not the be-all and end-all of it.
The clean-up and support for one of the most destructive storms of recent times will inevitably run into the many millions of dollars to help build Clutha and Southland residents back to where they were before.
One concern though is around generators, of which there appear to be far too few across the region.
It is easy to generalise, but with larger dairy farms being multi-million-dollar operations, should there have been enough generators around to cope with unexpected power cuts?
Back-up generators should be part of a farm emergency-management plan to ensure some resilience and the ability to carry on with as much as the job as possible when the electricity stops flowing.
