Recovery progress report - four months on

Four months ago a state of emergency was declared on 17 August 2022 after continuous heavy rain caused severe landslips and flooding. The rain caused more than 450 landslips in Whakatū Nelson and at least 1,200 people were evacuated from their homes. Where are we now?

Helping hand for affected residents:

• We have held regular community meetings and drop-in sessions to put residents in touch with agencies, geotechnical engineers and Council teams that deal with building and resource consents. We have grown our Navigator team from one person to a team of five, available to help people affected by the severe weather event.
• Our drop-in Navigator Hub opened in the State Advances building on Tuesday 29 November. The drop-in hub is open Monday-Friday 9:30am–5pm.
• The Nelson Tasman Mayoral Relief Fund had a whopping 933 donations received from our generous local, national and international communities. More than $700,000 has been paid out in grants to around 200 households.
• Regular email updates with information, with at least 12 email updates sent out to more than 150 affected residents so far.

Homes with red and yellow placards and a history of the peak:

• We are now at 21 red and 86 yellow.
• At the peak (24 August) we had 104 red and 82 yellow.
• There has been an almost 80% decrease in red placard homes. Note that many red homes have become yellow, which is why we have not seen such a significant decrease in that number.

Parks and infrastructure – what has been fixed:

• 95% of trails are now open to the public.
• Maitai Dam raw water pipeline is repaired.
• Maitai Valley Road and Grampians Road are repaired.
• Four main Maitai river swimming holes have been cleared of debris and gravel and reopened.