Winton deer farmer Cam Nelson with his family. Photo: Charlotte Cook / RNZ
A Southland farmer says fixing the damage to his business alone will cost more than what the government has stumped up for the entire region, following last week's storm.
The Southland and Clutha Mayoral Relief Funds have received $150,000 to assist with the recovery, but Winton deer farmer Cam Nelson says that would not even cover the costs on his 160ha of land.
The storm ripped up both fenceposts and trees, allowing stock to wander off.
"I was talking to an insurance guy on Friday and we weren't covered for trees or fences," he told RNZ. "By the time the cleanup's sort of done it'll be probably $200,000. It'll be $100,000 in fencing and then $100,000 in tidying up the trees.
"We're probably lucky in a way that none of the buildings got wrecked."
It could be a year until the farm was fully operational again, he said - a timeline that could have been much longer if he did not have friends and family pitch in to help over the weekend.
"We're quite lucky. My brother-in-law, he's a bushman, so got him and then another fella turned up with a digger and those two just worked flat out and getting the boundary cleared. And then on Saturday, the fences turned up with a heap of gear and just got into it - a heap of other people, friends and that, just donated the weekend... got away from the family and came and gave us a hand and got things done. So it's been pretty overwhelming, the support from them."
There were about 1200 animals on the farm, and the storm hit just two weeks before calving season was set to begin.
"It's pretty horrific really, what we've taken, but with the support of the people around us, things are turning pretty quickly. Like, when we first looked at it, it's just, it's going to be years of tidying up - but just to get the farm operational again, it's been pretty massive with the support of the people.
He said the damage would have been a lot worse had the storm hit during calving.
"Well, if it was another two or three weeks, we would have had the hinds all set socked and they'll be calving and that would have been more chaos, because you can't really move them with the fawns just the way that they fawn, because they go away and they have their fawn and then about five days later they'll bring that fawn back to the mob.
"So they'll be like planted out in the paddocks and they go back and feed them and then, so like, with the boundary fences and all that gone you'd never get them back, yeah."
The mayoral relief funds were "something", Nelson admitted, but it was "definitely not going to be enough" with possibly more than 500 trees damaged.
"If I'm $200,000 in the hole with the damage, other people are going to be in big holes like that as well… We'll be able to use these paddocks probably in a week's time, but then with the trees and stuff, that's, yeah, it's gonna be probably a year, probably by the time we get everything tidied up and there's a lot of work…
"And it's not just us, it's everyone else, you know? There's gonna be, there's a lot of firewood."
Luckily they managed to get the power back on at the weekend, vital for storing meat.
"I'd say the sales of generators will be going through the roof at the moment."
Size of fund questioned
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown last year told RNZ mayoral relief funds were a "simple means to administer government contributions and donations from the public".
Set up after a natural disaster and administered by local authorities, they provide one-off financial support to affected individuals, families, community groups and marae.
They were not a replacement for insurance and costs covered by other funding sources, but "supplement support that may be available from other agencies, such as the Ministry of Social Development and Ministry for Primary Industries", according to Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis told Morning Report "the community has responded really well, the regional emergency management officers have responded really well, Civil Defence have responded really well".
"My heart absolutely goes out to all of those who've been affected, whether their truck's been stuck on the road or whether their farm has been impacted or whether their electricity's gone off.
"But these are unfortunately the unavoidable impacts of a severe weather event... It's not clear to me what preventative steps could have been taken that would have stopped the snow falling and the wind blowing."
As for the mayoral relief fund, Wilis said the $150,000 was an "initial response".
"As is always the case, emergency management will continue to assess needs on the ground and keep that under active review."
Pressed on whether that was enough to make a difference to those on the ground, Willis repeated the assertion the amount was "under active review".
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