Hon Mark Mitchell, Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery, and Gore District Mayor Ben Bell

Southland & Clutha face the storm — and the recovery.

On 24 October 2025, Southland and the Clutha region (South/West Otago) were officially declared a state of emergency following a wild wind event that caused widespread damage. Just days later, on Labour Day, we welcomed Hon Mark Mitchell, Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery, and Gore District Mayor Ben Bell into the studio for a catch-up. We talked response, recovery, and what’s next for our region.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
That chitty and joining us and at the studio now
as our Minister for Emergency Management Mark Mitchell and our
good district Mayor Benbow. Good morning. A pleasure and an
honor to have you both in the studio. Normally I
throw all my heart heading questions Ben's way, but he's
brought you and him a shield. Yeah. I think it

(00:23):
is awesome to have you in the studio. I know
you've been out working hard. You had your big press
conference and meeting last night as well, so I guess
I'm just going to really throw it over to you
and button we're in I see.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
First, I'm going to put it right back at you. Sorry,
I'm sorry that Bean was telling me on the way
in here. I agree that completely. Is that you've been
met in the station now, you know throughout this event
and our local radio stations are normally the places that
people go to get the information. So I want to
acknowledge you and thank you for staying on, for meeting
the station, for making sure that updated information is getting

(00:59):
out to the community, because that information is so critically important.
So big commitment from you, and I know that you're
part of the community here and you're from a farming background,
so you understand and know all about it. But so
I just wanted to acknowledge and thank you for your commitment.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I do really appreciate that. But yeah, I just I
couldn't not and I keep my at you a week Wei,
yet I'm not like met to go off. My boss
wonderful humans said to me yesterday, you know, how do
you feel about going on here again tomorrow aware that
you have been working now for seven days in a row.
And I laughed and he said, what's rotten? Like, what

(01:37):
are you laughing? And I said, all of my life
when I've been a wool handler and all of these things,
never once have I got past the seven day point
in someone's cheeked in. This is how we're born and
bred down these parts.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
So we all know in the country that you know,
you're good seuth and stock. You're tough, and you're durable,
and you're resilient and you're quite simply outstanding as the
community coming together as well.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
So well done, Thank you and on that is that
where you're at. Do you think in Southland and southwest
Targo you know Kluther district as well, that the response
has been superb.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, the response has been very good. We had this
weird situation where you've got the mirror leks that haven't
sort of been sworn in yet, so which meant that
I step in through their advice and requests to actually
put you into a local state of emergency. Those decisions
are being made really quickly, which is which is important,
you know. Big shout out to NIMA and my own agency.

(02:38):
They have serged stuff in here for support, your civil
defense teams, your controllers, our first responders, the rural sector,
fed farmers, Fonterra PowerNet. I mean to be honest with you.
On the ground here, we've still got big challenges, without
a doubt, there's still a lot of work to do,
but everyone's come together. Everyone's working really well together to

(02:58):
make sure that we get the best response in place.
Even and I want to give a shout out to
a New Zealand Defense Forces as well, Yeah, who mobilized
straight away. We could see there was a need for
generators and without them, we want to be able to
get those generators on the ground is what we have.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Oh, it's been incredible and I think Ben you might
have some perspective on this as well, that even perhaps
that maybe our urban areas weren't so like, you know,
there was definitely no power for an amount of town
for people across the Gore district. But now that all
of this information is starting to come to light a
bit more, everybody's sort of getting a bigger understanding of

(03:35):
what's actually going on out there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Absolutely, I mean, like about a quarter of our town
didn't even lose power, and so that has been oh yeah,
bit of a windy day. But just the scale and
that can't be underestimated. That the scale of the thing.
South the second biggest district in the country, Cluth of
being the third, and when you combine those hea that
that's a huge area to cover. There's still many many
people without power. It's going to be what they're calling

(03:59):
a long tail. We will get there in the end.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
One of the funny things about these events I thought
we were talking about before we came on here, and
it's is that often you'll get one part of the
community that is not impacted at all, and then you'll
get another part of the community. We've got no power,
no communications, no excess, and so sometimes it's hard for
people to sort of reconcile in their own minds, Hey,
we're in a state of emergency, but actually my powers

(04:21):
of and get out of the house and get out
of the shops. But what it simply means is that
there's other parts of the community that heavily impact and
we've got to get help to them.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
And it has been really awesome to see on that,
you know, the likes of the Gormordi Sports Complex, some
of our local churches sports complex, all going you know what,
how do I get in here? We've got each other.
We might be cousins in terms of rural versus urban,
but yeah, well.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
The church on the street, what was it yesterday, you know,
with signed saying free soup, you know, free hot showers
and things. That's that's the sort of community spirit that
just makes these makes our job so much easier.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, and the key to emergency management. We are a
country that is going to continue to be hit with
these weather events. The best response is a whole of
society and a whole of community response, and we are
just getting better and better at that without a doubt.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Is there lessons to be learned from here?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, so there's always lessons to be learned. We will
do a full debrief as we do with all these events,
certainly from animus perspective, because we always learn something from it,
and like anything we do in life, we should be
looking for continual improvement and that's exactly what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
And I guess our rural communities would probably have me
by the garda f I didn't ask this question to
what's next for them in terms of support and all
of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
So I think from a central perspective at the moment
it's still it's actually reinstating those lifelines, power and communications,
and then of course we've got other gunment agencies here
MPIs on the ground. They're doing outstanding work and making
sure that we get all the information we understand what
further reports support is going to be required from central government.

(06:06):
I have just made one hundred thousand dollars available through
the Mirror Relief Fund, which is for immediate need, so
the mayors and the councils can have got some cashture
to deal with immediate needs that's right in front of them.
That's something that I normally do at most of these
local states emergency and since I've been Minister, which is

(06:26):
two years, I think this is number seventeen or eighteen,
so we do have a few and then of course
we're looking at the medium long term in terms of
what we need to do to continue to bring support in.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, and that is awesome that you are here on
the ground and aware of what actually needs to happen,
and then giving that support to your local means and
things like that. I know that you are both very
busy humans, and I could probably talk to you for
the next twenty four hours straight, but I will let
you keep going, which is crazy considering how much I
have been.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Talking, but have been getting better and better.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Well, if you.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Double check, we've been on quite low says. If so,
they'll brain and mouth indicator doesn't actually connect that often anyway.
But any final acknowledgments, words of advice, wisdom, whatever that
you want to leave with our community, were going to.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Give a final shout out and thank you to you
and the work you're doing. I'm going to give a
shout out, of course to all of our solid Defense teams,
all those working men in the EOCS, our first responders
who are doing outstanding job power net which I visited
them Messa and had a full briefing. They're actually doing
extremely well and trying to reinstore the reinstate the power,

(07:40):
all of the utility workers that are out there in
difficult conditions doing the work that they're doing, defense force,
of course, and finally the communities because they do get
behind these responses. Please maintain safety, use common sense and
pragmatism in terms of what you're doing. Don't go into
wise obviously, and please follow any instructions that come out

(08:04):
from either police offends or our SEDIM groups.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
And then just locally, and I know you would have
been pushing out this messaging already, Chitty, but if there
are our rural people or if you know of our
rural people who are still sharing generators, we're now entering
day five without power, so please get in touch with
Civil Defense. There are generators available, so we don't want
people burning out because they're just passing generators between each other.

(08:30):
So if you are sharing generators, please get in touch
with Civil Defense.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, I think, And that's a really good point from
being as that it doesn't matter how tough or resilient
you are. Fatigue starts to sit in and reach out
for help if you're starting to feel like you need it.
And we have got there are more generators coming into
the area. We've actually got a pretty good stock of
generators now to try and release some of that pressure
around sharing, but especially our rural sector and our farmers

(08:55):
and the rural community. If the pressure is coming on
and you feel it, reach out for.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Help and all of that and more. And you can
even if you don't have enough coverage to ring like
I've been saying, just text me five zeros EARO nine
and I'm happy to pass that info onto wherever it
needs to go. Our Minister for Emergency Management, Mark Mitchell,
and our Gore District mayor his worshippy. Thank you so

(09:22):
much and we'll keep in touch.