I've been manning the radio gear at the local Civil Defence Comms room for the last two days and from reports given from the response teams working around the district (checking on the elderly and rural folks) the damage sustained from this storm is a lot worse than first thought.
Now that the snow is starting to melt, there have been a couple of bridges washed out, poles and lines draped over roads and the biggest problem we have with the loss of supply to the rural areas is the fact that the majority of people use electricity to power submersible well pumps, so if you have no power, you also have no supply of water either. [Linked Image]
Electricity Ashburton has Line Crews in from as far away as Wellington working here to get our HV network up and running again, with local crews and Faults staff performing the isolation and tagging of damaged lines.
It's a very slow process, but we'll get there in the end.
I just hope that the next dump of snow that they are predicting for tomorrow/Monday, never eventuates.
Everyone down here that I've seen lately looks really worn out, another dump of snow would not be good at all.
I'll keep you posted. [Linked Image]