As farmers continue to work without power and try to keep their operations running at one of the busiest times of the year, another threat has loomed — reports of people trying to steal items.
People needed to remain vigilant against looters in storm-ravaged Catlins, a policeman warned yesterday.
"We’ve got to catch these punks," Senior Constable Riki Valentine, of Owaka, said to about 80 people while alerting them to potential looting on farms at a packed meeting at Ōwaka Community Centre yesterday.
People were entering farms without permission from the landowner to look for items to steal, he said.
"People have been going on farms to check them out and see what is lying around and unattended."
Any suspicious behaviour should be reported to police.
"If you can get a rego, it will help, otherwise, time, date, place and the direction they have gone — we’ve got to catch these punks — keep an eye out for your property and your neighbours."
Federated Farmers Otago president Luke Kane said he had not heard of any incidents, but they could quite easily occur.
"In the back of my mind there is potentially a risk of this happening ... it is hard to describe what these sort of people are like who do these sort of things.
"The lowest of the low, really. If they do get caught then they should throw the book at them."
As people were helping out and coming on to farms, it was hard to decipher who was who and who was really helping, he said.
He had his own generators on other farms but could not say where they were.
Clutha District Council Catlins ward councillor Dane Catherwood said though he had not heard of any thefts, it could happen.
He had been shocked by the concerns aired by the police.
"It is pretty poor and you do not want them to be here. It is very disappointing. But it is going to happen. It shouldn’t down here, but it does."
Work was continuing to restore power but it was a slow process.
PowerNet chief executive Paul Blue said the support from industry peers had been incredible. Equipment was being sourced from throughout the country.
The focus had been on ensuring critical services were powered, along with large urban areas and the region’s dairy farms.
Many individual properties had localised damage and were still without power, he said.
"We now have a plan to manage these and are asking people to report if they are in an area which is generally restored and their neighbours have power, but they don’t."
While the restoration of power throughout Otago and Southland was tracking well, the response was likely to have a long tail.
By tomorrow, PowerNet was likely to have a much better understanding of how long people could expect to wait for power to be restored.
Of the 53,900 customers across Southland and Clutha, 4550 remained without power.
Emergency Management Otago group controller Matt Alley said in a statement in one instance, 5km of cable needed to be laid to restore power for just two houses, so it was intense and intricate labour and an exhausting long haul for power crews.
It might take two weeks before all power was restored.
Clutha District Council had contributed $100,000 to Clutha’s Mayoral Relief Fund.
In Invercargill, the destruction to trees and plants in the city’s parks and reserves was described as staggering by the council chief executive.
More trees fell on Tuesday night.
Council chief executive Michael Day said in a statement the council could not stress enough how important it was for people to stay out of all parks, reserves, sports fields and playgrounds until they were reopened.
"We are absolutely not out of the danger zone. We have been really lucky that nobody in our community has been injured, or worse. Even though the winds have eased, a huge number of trees and branches are still in a really precarious and vulnerable position, and they are extremely dangerous."
People were still accessing parks and reserves.
"The storm itself was relatively short, but unfortunately the aftermath will be much more prolonged and time-consuming."
Some smaller branches that had fallen would be mulched.
Logs and trunks would eventually be made available as free firewood for the community or milled for other use, he said.
"The damage that’s been sustained to our green spaces is unlike any other weather event we have seen in our parks and reserves before. The recovery effort will take weeks, if not longer.
"The scale of the destruction is really staggering."
