Flood-hit Tasman residents are frustrated with delays in getting telecommunications services back up and running.
Their anger boiled over during a Civil Defence-coordinated community meeting in Wakefield on Wednesday afternoon, attended by dozens.
Mayor Tim King described the situation as an “epic cock-up”.
“We’ve been working furiously, but ultimately it is Chorus, Spark, Vodafone [One NZ], who are responsible for putting that back up,” he told upset locals.
“We have tried every conceivable way of getting them to do it faster. I am beyond frustrated at the lack of communication. Cellphone coverage should have been back up and running, even if it’s on a temporary basis, way earlier than they are… We have made it very bluntly clear, and we will continue to do so, that it’s completely unacceptable the position that you’ve all been left in.”
The Nelson Tasman region was hit with heavy rain on Friday and Saturday last week, with rural Tasman communities in the Moutere-Waimea and Motueka wards hardest hit.
Eighty-Eight Valley farmer and furniture maker Scott Ladley said it was the most water he’s ever seen come through the valley.
“River’s gone through all the hay, gone through my yard. I’ve got furniture flitches, they’re all down the bloody paddock,” he said.
“I can’t even get on the paddocks because they’re that sodden, all it’d do is just make a hell of a mess. I’ve got stock running everywhere because all the fences are down … It’s an absolute nightmare.”
It would take time to get his land in order, but it was the mobile coverage that made Ladley upset.
“What really pisses me off is Spark. Unbelievable. They couldn’t even send us a message,” he said. “With the [2019 Pigeon Valley] fire, they had it going the next day … f***ing useless.”
His wife Sharon added: “Our daughter was really sick the other day, and we didn’t know… she’d nearly had a seizure, and we couldn’t get hold of anybody.
“I’ve got a daughter overseas panicking because she’s even hearing about this, trying to get hold of me, and I’m standing in the corner, getting one bar and then it goes… they’re hopeless.”
Nelson Tasman Civil Defence group controller Alec Louverdis said the telecommunication outages had not “been ideal”.
He said the Wakefield area, particularly, was “a challenge” as it had lost several cell towers, but added that the area was a focus for providers.
“They are finding as soon as they’re digging down, the groundwater is so high that it’s making their life very, very difficult … They know the urgency, because, especially from a civil defence [and] from a central government point of view, if we don’t have comms, we are working blind.”
Louverdis told residents that the One New Zealand network was “business as usual” in the Wakefield township, that Spark had set up a temporary mobile cell tower in the town, and that Chorus hoped to reconnect fibreoptic cables, which had been washed away, later today.
Spark’s network and operations director Renee Mateparae said severe weather caused fibre line damage across the region.
“New Zealand’s fibre network is managed by other providers – but, because fibre connects cell sites back to the core mobile network, the damage resulted in four Spark cell sites being unable to operate.”
Those four towers are all now back online, and an emergency temporary mobile site (sometimes called ‘cell sites on wheels’ or ‘COWs’) was set up in Wakefield to restore 4G coverage by midday Tuesday.
Mateparae said Spark had been working to establish a network of satellite-connected small cells around the country which can be deployed to provide basic mobile connectivity during emergencies should fibre line be damaged. One such emergency mobile site was set up in Murchison following last week’s storm, which was the first time the solution had been deployed outside of a test environment.
She added that was the first time that emergency solution has been used outside of a test environment.
“We also have additional emergency satellite cells on stand-by if required… we’re continuing to work with the community to deploy more temporary solutions if needed.”
A One New Zealand spokesperson said only one of their towers in the area at Pigeon Valley Road was impacted, which was a back-up tower, and has since been restored as of 2.14pm Wednesday.
“So coverage impacts for One NZ customers were minimal.”
The spokesperson added that One NZ offered its users satellite texting which still works even when cell towers were down. Anyone could get a free trial of the service, provided they had an internet connection to register.
If users on one mobile network that was down made a call to 111, it would be rerouted through another network due to industry back-up protocols.
2degrees and Chorus have also been approached for comment.
There would be opportunities to look back and debrief on the response to the floods in the future, Louverdis added, but his focus was on looking ahead to the upcoming rains and the future recovery.
Looking forward, more rain was forecast for Thursday with the MetService issuing two orange heavy rain warnings.
Tasman northwest of Motueka is forecast to receive 120-150mm of rain, with up to 200mm possible in localised areas, at peak rates of 20-30mm per hour, from 3am to 6pm.
Forecasts also expect 80-110mm of rain around the Marlborough Sounds and Richmond Ranges, and 50–80mm elsewhere with rainfall peaking at 15-25mm per hour, mainly in the ranges, from 6am to 9pm.
The current state of emergency was meant to end Saturday morning, but it would likely be extended as a result of the incoming weather, residents were told.
Louverdis said the forecast rain was the “last thing we needed”.
“The rainfall events coming through will be significant, especially for those people that have already been hit … We have done a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that we have mobilised absolutely every resource possible.”
New Zealand Defence Force resources, such as crews, Unimogs, and a night-vision equipped helicopter had been strategically deployed around the region to coordinate emergencies and evacuations, and Fire and Emergency New Zealand water rescue teams were on stand-by, he said.
Louverdis encouraged people to self-assess their situation and self-evacuate if they felt it necessary, to family or friends if possible, though an evacuation centre was also being established at Wakefield’s St John’s Anglican Church.
Residents who self-evacuated were asked to alert Civil Defence if they were able to do so, or to tell their neighbours or somebody else who could.
“If you haven’t got comms, and we haven’t been out to you yet, you need to come in and ask for help.”
More than 170 workers across 25 teams have been making repairs to the regional road network over the last week, reducing the number of closures from 60 to less than half that figure.
Contractors have also been in Tasman rivers, with a focus on the Motueka and Motupiko, completing works in “key areas” to prepare for Thursday’s rain.
Residents were given the green light by Mayor Tim King to conduct river works on their properties to prepare for the storm as well, but were urged to be “extremely careful”.
Well-known local Peter Lines was killed by a falling tree in Wai-iti, south of Wakefield, while clearing flood damage on Saturday.
Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.