Tairawhiti looks to recover from cyclone devastation

That’s how Richard Burke, chief executive of Leaderbrand – one of the largest horticultural operations in the region – described to Rural News what happening a week after cyclone Gabrielle stuck the district.

The cyclone has badly damaged some horticultural businesses, but strangely, only relatively minor damage to others.

The word variable seems to sum up the situation.

However, the issues around infrastructure – in particular roading – seem destined to be a long term fix. The state highway from Gisborne to Napier is likely impassable for up to six months.

When we spoke to Burke, the biggest and most immediate problem for Gisborne was water. Water to wash newly harvested crops and for meat processing plants, not to mention cleaning up and its use in retail establishments such as restaurants.

“We have got very limited water here at the moment and we are hoping this can be resolved soon, although we may have options on site that we can utilise,” he says.

What Burke is talking about is a huge dam Leaderbrand has built to supply water for a 10 hectare covered area designed to protect certain crops. He says their outdoor crops were largely saved by a new stop bank that was built last year, which prevented them from being inundated by floodwaters.

“Where we have good protection we have had good crops, so we are harvesting lettuce, sweetcorn, some salad crops and grapes from our vineyard,” he told Rural News.

“We have road access out via Opotiki and we are getting everything out that we can to markets.”

Burke can’t put a percentage on the amount of crops going out and says now is not the time to start running numbers and doing calculations. He says the focus is just on doing what is possible and working as hard as possible to do this.

“We still have of stuff here and we have still got a lot of opportunity but it’s a battle and we are battling and we are not going to give up.”

Leaderbrand also has commercial growing operations in Pukekohe, Matamata and in Canterbury, which is part of the company’s risk and resilience plan. Burke says the various operations support each other and that has helped keep the company in the game and keep the supply lines open.

He says the other sites have also had challenges, but overall, this plan has allowed Leaderbrand to maximise opportunities.

Another action the company has taken to manage risk is to build a huge 10.7 hectare canopy over some of its prime land. The $15 million dollar project includes a 40 million litre dam that takes water from the roof of the canopy and provides irrigation. Burke says some of the structure has been completed and is fully operational.

“The problem is getting it finished and this is the second cyclone to hit us, so we are well behind on the build. But we suffered very little damage to it from Gabrielle, which was good.

“We had intended to put flood control in on that site but that hadn’t happened, so we did have bit of water get in there. It works very well but it is only another tool in the tool box and nothing is 100% safe,” he says.

Getting Back To Normal

Week two is reality week Richard Burke says.

He told Rural News that after the initial shock of the disaster, there is now time to breath and look at the losses and the challenges that lie ahead, which is hard.

He says Cyclone Gabrielle was tough on staff and they worked on adrenalin in the first week and are tired. But Burke says the focus, in the past week, has been to get some normality back into life, such as opening schools and people getting back to work.

He says the aim is getting people productive and doing things they usually do, not sitting around – that just makes things worse, he says.

“We are lucky in that we have dedicated teams of people who want to work so that is not something we have to worry about.”

Burke believes it is now time to stand up and think about how the region can get more resilience into its infrastructure.

“The time has come for the community to puts its foot down and say, ‘how do we spend our money on infrastructure to make our roading, power, water and communications networks better?’” he says. “Because they are the things that are going to support us in this region.”