Craig Jepson: Kaipara mayor on the fallout from yesterday's tornado

The Mangawhai community is banding together to pick up the pieces from yesterday morning's tornado.

Two people were seriously injured and nine buildings are yellow stickered - with another 26 white stickered as possibly damaged, but safe. 

Restoring power is taking longer than first expected, with worse damage than first thought.

All but 30 customers should have electricity by midnight.

Kaipara mayor Craig Jepson says only one person has needed emergency accommodation through the welfare team.

"Other than that, I think people relied on the generosity of friends and family and other people that stepped up."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Boy, the storm and Mangafi. It was short, it was sharp,
it was specifically violent. Nine homes and buildings got yellow stickered.
Eighty one lost their power after the tornado came through.
Two people were seriously injured. One bloke in a motor
hub was almost skewed by a flying tree. There were
about fifty properties in the in the beach sediment that
were damaged when the storm came through early yesterday morning.

(00:21):
And of course everybody's asleep and suddenly all hell is
breaking loose. So today they're mopping up and we are
joined by the KAI Premier, Craig Jepson. Hella, Craig, you've
got hearing Andrew hell of the night.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
A oh man, keep you going on, But excuse the
pun that we can now see the wood for the trees.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
See well by saying it's still going on, it is
the weather still a bit dodgy up there.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
No, it's not the weather. It's the ongoing commitment to
trying to get things back to normal. We've had a
huge clean up going on and it's going to continue
for a while. The it's quite, it's quite, and tell
you to see it. You don't realize how how effective
that storm. Was it destroying stuff? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yes, short sharp and violence and I really did the
blue houses apart the power. Where is the power going
to come back on? Because we're hearing that might be delayed.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, they've discovered that there's Tea power poles that have
got serious cracks and they've they've had to renew after
renewing most of the ones that have fallen over so
and also they found that there was a transformer that
needed replacing, so that's kind of slowed things down a bit.
But no Power will have all but thirty customers restored
with power by midnight tonight, and tomorrow they'll clean that up.

(01:38):
So I'm expecting all power to be restored sometime tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
A lot of people displaced, do they all get accommodation?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
It was everyone that We've got one person who required
emergency accommodation and the welfare team organized this. But other
than that, I think people will relied on the generosity
of friends and family and other people that stepped up.
So that's what communities do for each other in these situation.
It's been great.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
I was going to say, let's talk about the community,
because that's always the designing and defining factor after something
was horrific, as is, how are they responding?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Look brilliantly. That's what's expected here in the corpriate district.
You know, we had that with Gabriel as well. People
do they just step up and the generosity is the
kiwis you know. One of our problems has actually been
to try and hold people back from wanting to help,
simply because of the power line situation made it dangerous
to be in there.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
It couldn't have happened in the worse weekend because it's
the ok the anniversary and you were pretty full.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, that's true. People have been very respectful. We haven't
had rubberneckers down there. It's been I think I could
say that we've had a great response from our emergency services,
particularly our power people North. But you know, for example,

(03:02):
today the news zalone response team from Orkan came up.
There were about twenty four of them and they linked
up with counselors and myself and we went door knocking.
There's a lot of people there, I would imagine who
were very traumatized by the sevent I mean, you imagine
it came and it went, It came with a roar,
The noise of it, and it was intreadible and then

(03:24):
fifteen probably only about fifteen seconds in your house is
no more so it was frightening for him.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well, mate, it sounds like your community is good. It
sounds like you're getting through it, and i'd like to
thank you for taking your time out to tell us
all what's happening. Craig Jeffson is the mayor of Kuipra
among off ay As, a town that's been.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
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