Robyn Hale's home, with her bedroom in the foreground, after severe spring storms, in October, 2025. Photo: RNZ/ Katie Todd
Clutha and Southland residents are adapting to life on gas bottles and generators as thousands enter a second week waiting for the power to go back on.
Lines company PowerNet said it had bolstered its reconnection efforts, with extra crews and seven trucks' worth of supplies, but 3670 properties were still offline across the two districts by Thursday night, the 30th of October.
Severe spring storms last week, particularly on Thursday 23 October, had badly damaged infrastructure and private property in many parts of the South Island and lower North Island, with huge winds and heavy rain recorded in many places.
Wind damage in Kaitangata. Photo: RNZ/ Katie Todd
In Kaitangata, Otago, Robyn Hale was preparing for the long haul.
Last Thursday's wind brought down an enormous tree onto her house, taking out power to it and the granny flat she was now sharing with her two grandchildren.
She said the three of them had been improvising - using car headlights as living room lamps, making trips to the laundromat in Balclutha, filling hot water bottles to keep warm at night, and making meals on a gas cooker.
"We're getting good at making two-minute noodles. I even made macaroni cheese the other night. It wasn't too bad...ish," she said.
Robyn Hale and the remnants of her Kaitangata home. Photo: RNZ/ Katie Todd
Hale said friends had dropped off gas bottles for the cooker, which were hard to come by.
"We went in to get some the other day and there were none. Nowhere in Balclutha. The whole of Balclutha was cleaned out of them. There was no camping gear either, like camping lights and things like that," she said.
Her house had been yellow-stickered after being sliced in half and left open to the elements.
She said that apart from her cat and a wheelbarrow of food and supplies rescued by fire crews, she could not retrieve her belongings.
"You can see my bedroom, my bed is still made, but it's soaking wet. It rained and snowed in my bedroom the other day," she said.
Hale and her granddaughter were in the house at the time the tree came crashing down with a deafening "bang", but she was relieved it had fallen on her house, not towards her older neighbours, she said.
What is left of the tree that fell on Robyn Hale's home. Photo: RNZ/ Katie Todd
The three decorated the tree with a star before it was sent off to be chipped, and were planning a celebratory burn of the wood in a couple of years, she said.
"We're going to have a party when it's dry," she said.
The yellow sticker on Robyn Hale's home. Photo: RNZ/ Katie Todd
On Tony Homer's Waitahuna farm, a span of powerlines was buried under a towering pile of macrocarpa trees, which he estimated had been standing for more than a century before last week's storm.
He had been getting by with generators and satellite internet since then, but was looking forward to when it was his turn to be linked back up to the grid, and he could bring in heavy machinery to safely clear the debris.
Tony Homer and the large macrocarpa trees which have fallen on his farm, taking out a span of powerline. Photo: RNZ/ Katie Todd
"We've got generators on the houses and the woolshed. It's Groundhog Day, I suppose, filling those a couple of times a day," he said.
"I don't think we've ever experienced more than two days, in my memory, of power outage. So it's quite a novelty, really, but I think it will wear thin pretty soon."
At the neighbouring farm, Don Murray said livestock were beginning to cotton on that the electric fences were not live.
"The lambs particularly are starting to test the fences a bit," he said.
He too was using generators to power his freezers and hot water cylinder, but said after seven days "you wouldn't want to go on too, too long."
Alistair Storer's wind-damaged sheds. Photo: RNZ/ Katie Todd
Back over near Kaitangata, Alistair Storer was facing a long clean-up of his wind-shredded farm sheds, where he said it looked like a bomb had gone off.
But he was celebrating small wins as he was one of the residents to get power restored yesterday.
He said the moment he realised it was back felt "bloody good."
"I was sitting there in the chair reading, and I looked up and the lights on the TV were on. And I thought, shit, we've got it back," he said.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
