New Zealand appoints ministers in charge of Cyclone Gabrielle response

WELLINGTON:  A Cabinet committee and regional ministerial leads were appointed on Tuesday to help coordinate the response and recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle which lashed New Zealand’s North Island over the past week.

The new Extreme Weather Recovery Committee will be chaired by Finance Minister Grant Robertson as Minister for Cyclone Recovery, with Barbara Edmonds as deputy. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty will also be members.

“The government is fully aware of the scale of the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle and that the rebuild will come with a multi-billion dollar price tag,” Hipkins said. The cyclone has left 11 people dead and more than 3,200 people uncontactable.

As New Zealanders were cleaning up the mud left by Cyclone Gabrielle, the government has provided an initial support package of 50 million NZ dollars (31 million U.S. dollars) for businesses, farmers and growers, as well as injecting an extra 250 million NZ dollars (156 million U.S. dollars) to help local councils fix roads, get transport links back up and access into communities, Hipkins said.

“But recovery is going to take a long time, so the Committee will help steer the work needed over the coming weeks and months to get affected regions back up and running again,” he said.

Ministers, in place for each affected region, will work directly with local councils on the local response and ensure local voices are heard and acted on, he added.

More fatalities still remain possible, said the prime minister, adding that the government discussed initial recovery plans on Monday, with the cost of the recovery estimated to be about 13 billion NZ dollars (8.12 billion U.S. dollars).
New Zealand’s resilience is being tested like never before, Hipkins said.

“Lives have been turned upside down … Many people have seen their homes and all of their possessions completely destroyed. Countless others have been displaced,” he said.

About 10,000 people have been displaced by the adverse event, the level of which New Zealand has not seen since the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, the authorities said.

New Zealand declared state of emergency on Feb. 13, the third time in the country’s history, followed by widespread power outages, flight cancellations and school closures in the North Island.

It is only two weeks after Auckland and the adjacent region Waikato were inundated by record downpours and floods. Four people were killed in the previous disaster three weeks ago, mainly in Auckland, the country’s largest city.