Wet, wet, wet!

The only way in or out is by helicopter. To help these people, Federated Farmers has appointed a coordinator to collect donations and get food and othe urgent supplies to these people.

Feds Gisborne/Wairoa president Toby Williams farms at Whangara, about 30km north of Gisborne. His farm is next to Whangara farms, one of the largest Māori farms on the East Coast.

He told Rural News that this storm event was not as big as cyclone Bola back in 1988. However, some farmers Williams has spoken to say the damage on their properties was greater this time than when Bola struck more than 30 years ago.

Where he lives at Whangara, they received about 450mm of rain, which caused about 40 slips that damaged fences and took out farm tracks. Further north at Tokomaru Bay, there was over 700mm of rain which did the same.

But Williams says the heaviest rainfall was inland from Wairoa, where at one location, 1.2 metres of rain was recorded, which is unheard of. He says in that area, farmers have been using helicopters to get to mobs of ewes that are due to go to the ram. Williams says the best many can do right now is to secure their boundary fences and put out as many rams as they can and hope for the best. "One of the lessons we farmers took from Bola was the need to stabilise our hill country, and to that end, hundreds of thousands of poplar and willow poles were planted and this helped prevent some of the slips," he told Rural News.

Williams says Feds is working closely with other agencies to see what help farmers may need. They are planning to do a survey to get a clearer picture of the damage and share this information with the Rural Support Trust. He says now that they're in 'recovery mode' they want to help all those in need.

"We are going to make a special point of checking on Māori farms that make up a very large proportion of the farms in the region, both in terms of numbers and scale," he adds. "We also want to see what we can do for lifestyle farmers because we believe they will have some big challenges dealing with the aftermath of the storm."