Weather: Emergency not over in wake of South Island storm

The severe storm that ripped through Southland and South Otago, disrupting communications, water, and power, has not claimed any lives, according to emergency managers. PowerNet has restored power to all but 9500 customers, down from 50,000 earlier in the day. However, the company cautioned that due to the damage caused by the ferocious winds on Thursday, it could be five days before electricity is restored in some areas. 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. "Within about 15 minutes, we went from an orange warning to a red one. "MetService was expecting it to be an orange, within 15 minutes we had 170ks out on the Foveaux [Strait]. That is unusually large. "I think we all responded very quickly to a situation that was moving very quickly. "It's always pedal to the metal, but you are desperate to find situational awareness. With limited power and communications, that was challenging." Paul Blue, CEO of PowerNet, stated that hundreds of power poles were down across the region. He stated, "The devastation that occurred has snapped many poles, so there are some customers out there that will take quite a significant amount of time to get on." "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.

According to Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell, approximately 20 generators had been flown into Southland to restore connectivity to cellular networks, and dairy farmers were also given priority. "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.

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