Tapawera residents battle to get home after major slips

Tasman residents have been working relentlessly to clear major slips and get access to their homes just days after a second storm brought devastation to the region.

A chunk of the mountainside has crashed down Wangapeka West Bank Road, near Tapawera.

It has brought mounds of dirt over the road, cutting off at least four properties.

Aspect contracting's Darren Richardson said he was trying to clear it out for residents.

"You just bore your way in and make yourself a bench with the digger and just start cutting into it.

"You got to keep an eye on what's above you. So if you feel any - see any rocks come down you just get out."

He's made a path through to the other side so people can walk through.

But further up the road, there's more devastation and the piles of logs, mud and debris makes the road impassable.

"A lot of slop from the creeks and trees that have fallen over from the wind.

"I've cleared most of it up - just to get a track through - but there's a lot to clean," Richardson said.

Jo Shaw is one of the residents who lives on the other side of the slip.

She has been cut off from her house for days since Friday's deluge.

"It's just devastating for everyone I think. I smashed my phone accidentally, I've now got no phone to even try and find out what's going up there.

"So I'm using everyone else's phone, can I get through? Is my cat ok? Is the house still standing?," Shaw said.

She doesn't know how long she'll be out of her house for.

Logs and trees collapsed in the gales and rain, hitting her neighbour's cars and damaging her water supply.

"I'm just hoping I can get some clothes, and I can't stay there because my whole water system, pipes, everything has all just been floated away.

"So I'm going to have to stay at a mate's caravan."

Sections of Tapawera-Baton road have become mud, with small mountains of logs and trees at the sides.

Tasman civil defence said 13 teams were visiting flood affected properties to investigate damage on Monday.

That included in parts of Tadmore, Rocky River at the Motueka Valley, Dovedale, Baton River and in the Wai-iti area.

Della Webby at the Tapawera community centre said residents couldn't drink or prepare food without boiling water.

Like in parts of Dovedale, Tapawera Residents were still under a boil water notice, including those on private bores.

The level of flooding has made the contamination risk high.

"We're supplying bottled water and containers of water at the community centre. So they are available for the residents to collect if they need them.

"We are currently working with TDC navigators to source extra water to bring in through the week."

Webby said the emotional toll of the second storm has been even more severe than the first.

"It's been incredibly hard on the community. The anxiety and emotion of people has been extremely high.

"At the first event, a lot of people were just in shock, and now they are starting to crumble."

'Back to the start' for businesses cleaning up

Elsewhere in Tapawera, farms and businesses have been tirelessly clearing out mud, gravel and silt.

Hayden Oldham from New Hoplands said "it's back to the start" to clean up their engineering workshop and hops.

"Everything we cleaned up has been spread back out and gone through sheds and gardens."

He said the workshop had about 300 millimetres of water running through it and it left about the same amount of silt and sand.

"Around the sheds it's washed away all of our shed area, washed all the gravel into the hop gardens, got water all through the sheds and into some of our accommodation."

He said the company's hop farm in Ngatimoti had been engulfed in a thick layer of silt, logs had taken out the hop posts, which would need to be put back up.

He was hopeful the weather wouldn't affect the hops too much.

"Hops are real hardy and right now they're asleep in the ground, so I am hopeful they won't get too affixiated.

"If we can scrape the worst of the slurry off they should be able to grow through the sand."

But he said the clean-up would be costly for businesses and farms, and many people still had insurance claims from the first flood to be sorted.

"We've had floods here before but never this bad - and not twice."

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