Trees block the Woods' drive

You can hardly see the Woods' car for the trees. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

After the storm passed over last night David and Sian Wood found their drive to look around at storm damage was a very short one.

'We went to go out last night, came round the corner and hello, there's a tree over the drive,” says David today.

In the headlights they could see only one tree. They didn't realise at the time that there were three more large pine trees fallen across the driveway off Taniwha Place.

They are stranded. They are within a few kilometres of the supermarket in Bethlehem, but they won't be driving anywhere until the trees are cleared. He thinks they will be stuck for days.

'There's four trees fallen over on the driveway, we can't get out. And there's another five sitting on the edge of a bank that could come down at any time,” says David.

'That's what worries me with these other ones because they are just basically sitting there on the edge of the dirt, we have a land slip as well. So it's a bit scary.

He's got a chainsaw, but not big enough to cut up the big old pines.

'It's Good Friday and we are stranded up for the weekend.”

In Te Puke falling trees cut power to about 350 customers, the worst affect town in the Powerco network.

"Matakana Is was also affected with 180 customers out originally but we have been able to restore service to all but 20.” says Powerco Network Operations Manager Phil Marsh.

'Fortunately we avoided the brunt of the storm and the impact on our network was not as severe as anticipated."

He's hoping most of their customers will be reconnected today.

In Horizon Networks Energy territory further east there are real problems. Cyclone Cook caused significant damage to power infrastructure supplying the Whakatane, Kawerau and Opotiki districts. The following areas are without power:

- All areas east of Ohiwa Harbour including Waimana, Waiotahi, Opotiki, Te Kaha and Cape Runaway.

- Ohope, Coastlands, Whakatane, Otakiri, Taneatua, Ruatoki, part of Tauranga Rd east of Matata,

- Matata, Thornton, Manawahe and Herepuru Rd.

- Galatea, Murupara, Minginui and Ruatahuna.

Horizon's first priority along with Transpower is to restore sub-transmission to the District, says a statement today. Helicopters are deployed and assessing the infrastructure as well as ground crews. Once the sub-transmission is restored Horizon will progressively restore the 11kV network.

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2 comments

needs

Posted on 14-04-2017 13:11 | By Capt_Kaveman

to buy a bigger saw, omg people have become so soft, even by myself id have that tree in the video done in a few hours with wood for next years fire


Oh dear

Posted on 15-04-2017 07:17 | By fletch

Not so bad really. At least you dont have water running through your house destroying it. So what if you have to wait a day or so to get to the shops. You will survive


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