The last PowerNet update on Thursday showed there were 65 customers still without power across Clutha and Southland. Photo: Ingrid Leary
The Clutha District's state of emergency has come to an end, two weeks after damaging winds tore through the region.
Mayor Jock Martin officially declared the district was moving from emergency mode to recovery mode on Friday morning.
He said a "gargantuan effort" had gone into getting the power back on, infrastructure reconnected and the worst of the debris cleared.
"I'd like to personally thank all the people who have worked with us as a council and especially the community, many of whom have done it hard through the past 15 days, without power, water and their usual resources. Your resilience and determination to get through has been a thing to behold."
While the emergency phase was a sprint, the recovery would take a lot longer, he said.
"We also know that the recovery will be a marathon, a long road to get everything fixed, the fences repaired and for people to go about their normal lives again."
The last PowerNet update on Thursday showed there were 65 customers still without power across Clutha and Southland, down from 50,000 at the peak of the storm.
Southland's Sonia Gerken said she was enjoying turning on lights and using wifi after 12 days without power.
"Initially it was very challenging but you get into a rhythm. We were very fortunate that we had support of very good friends so we had somewhere to go to wash clothes, have showers and things like that," she said.
"You sort of go through periods where you're thinking like 'oh my gosh this is terrible'. And then it's like, 'there are probably people that are worse off than us'."
Gerken said she found a generator to pump water to the troughs of the animals on her lifestyle block and power a fridge in the garage four days after the storm.
Her property was among the final 200 to be connected and the sight of lines crews near her house this week was exciting, Gerken said.
She said the outage was caused by fallen trees on her property and did not affect her neighbours.
"For [PowerNet] to restore the power to us, was just to one property, so I get that they had to prioritise the areas where they could have the biggest impact on the number of consumers. That didn't help my brain rationalise it by day 11, but I can appreciate it," she said.
Gerken said the 12 days off-line was a lesson in being prepared, especially when power outages were widespread and relying on neighbours and friends was not an option.
"If there's a big event where the whole area is without power, then the message from me is you've got to be prepared. All those things that you hear from emergency management about having batteries and having radios and having back-up and having your chargers charged, it just reinforced that," she said.
The last PowerNet update on Thursday showed there were 65 customers still without power across Clutha and Southland.
Southland District's state of emergency was lifted on Thursday, with Invercargill City Council group manager Rex Capil appointed the region's recovery manager.
He told Morning Report authorities were monitoring critical services like electricity and water.
"They have for some time now been operating as per normal but it's just one of those things, especially with fluctuations of power and supply of power, that we'll continue to monitor."
Many parks and reserves were still closed until authorities had assessed any potentially unstable trees, he said.
"We've never experienced the winds and the brutality of the weather that we did two weeks ago."
Capil said authorities were yet to tally the true cost of the storm.
"I think one thing that will probably bubble to the surface in the next few weeks, which we haven't really had an eye on is just the economic impact - the economic impact on our agricultural areas and primary producers and production services, but also coming into a pretty significant tourism season."
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