{"id":251725,"date":"2026-01-26T00:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T00:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/251725\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T00:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T00:21:08","slug":"clutha-clean-up-continues-as-council-bill-nears-1m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/251725\/","title":{"rendered":"Clutha clean-up continues as council bill nears $1m"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Katie Todd of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

A storm that lasted minutes has equated to at least a year’s work on their 220-hectare sheep and beef farm near Clydevale, Holly and Todd McCammon say.<\/p>\n

The pair watched entire shelter belts tip over\u00a0on October 23, ripping up kilometres of fencing, blocking the driveway, and narrowly missing stock.<\/p>\n

Branches were hurled like javelins into paddocks, and while no people or animals were injured, the pair have vowed not to plant eucalyptus trees on the property again.<\/p>\n

In the months since, the McCammons have been juggling seasonal farm work with long days on the chainsaw and hammering in new fence posts.<\/p>\n

“It was just so much destruction in such a short amount of time,” Holly McCammon said.<\/p>\n

“The scale of it – it was a shock looking around… knowing how much it would take to clean up,” Todd McCammon said.<\/p>\n

He said the pair had spent about $25,000 repairing the farm to date – “and that’s probably halfway.”<\/p>\n

Like many farmers, the McCammons’ insurance did not cover fallen trees or damaged fencing.<\/p>\n

The pair were still waiting for heavy machinery to deal with the largest logs.<\/p>\n

“There’s so many contractors around to do it, so you just got to wait until you can get one,” he said.<\/p>\n

In Balclutha, logging contractor Mike Hurring said the backlog of storm-damaged properties was growing daily, and could take about two years to get through.<\/p>\n

Hurring, of Mike Hurring Logging & Contracting, said his crews had completed work at 25 properties, had six others under way and 87 still to go.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got 150,000 tonnes of logs we’re cleaning up at this stage… and that’s just private properties, not commercial,” he said.<\/p>\n

He was concerned about people taking matters into their own hands while they waited – using chainsaws in situations that require heavy machinery and professional crews to be done safely.<\/p>\n

“There’s been some horror stories. I’ve heard of farmers being flung around paddocks from logs they’ve cut off, chainsaws getting ripped out of people’s hands and thrown over their heads. I haven’t heard of any serious injuries but there’s been a lot of close calls,” he said.<\/p>\n

His advice: “If you think that something looks dangerous, then it is dangerous.”<\/p>\n

Hurring said he was trying to hire another 10 to 15 staff and was prioritising farms where timber could still be salvaged.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got a bit of a window of opportunity with wood that has still got the root plates on it, has got a bit of a life left in it. The stuff that’s broken off though is dying pretty quickly.”<\/p>\n

Some farmers, however, have already cut their losses.<\/p>\n

Clutha district councillor Simon McAtamney lives on a 540-hectare sheep farm near Clydevale with his wife Camille, where they estimate thousands of trees have fallen in hard-to-reach areas of their forestry blocks.<\/p>\n

“It’s been hard work trying to get forestry crews in. They’ve been flat out, and a lot of what’s broken in there now – it’s three months on, it won’t be suitable for good timber. A lot will just get written off now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve still got quite a bit of standing. It’s just going to be very expensive to log it in the future because of that broken stuff.”<\/p>\n

The couple managed to secure a contractor with a digger to clear their shelter belts but were still waiting for fencing repairs.<\/p>\n

Compared to three months earlier, the farm now looked “semi-tidy”, McAtamney said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got about 60 big piles of wood slash and firewood. But if you get too close then you see all the holes in the fences and the missing fences… I think it’ll take a couple of years to get everything fully repaired. We’ve just got to stagger it out and prioritise,” he said.<\/p>\n

The storm had been a wake-up call, McAtamney said.<\/p>\n

“It has been very hard for a lot of people. In this part of the world, we always thought we’d lived in a pretty benign sort of climate when it comes to extreme events – but we’ve been proven wrong. In a way, it was our turn, just like it is for others at the moment,” he said.<\/p>\n

Clutha District Council bill nears $1m<\/p>\n

Clutha District Council response manager Sharon Jenkinson said the cost of repairing damaged community amenities had climbed to $991,000.<\/p>\n

She said it could take months to clear some parks, and the council remained focused on supporting residents through the storm’s aftermath.<\/p>\n

“We’re looking at ways to help our district and get labour units here to help, especially in the rural community with cleanup, fencing, safety, and issues with property damage,” she said.<\/p>\n

The storm, which cut power for weeks in some areas, had also prompted a rethink on emergency preparedness, Jenkinson said.<\/p>\n

“The devastation that was caused by the wind event, we’ve never seen anything like it here before. It was on a scale we’ve never experienced. So we’ll certainly be taking extra precautions and be watching the orange wind warnings when they’re issued,” she said.<\/p>\n

The council was also looking to boost its supply of generators and battery-operated communications technology, she said.<\/p>\n

“We know that this event’s influenced many people to consider what they need to do to be prepared for any future events. And I know a lot of the other agencies in the rural sector especially are encouraging their farmers to be prepared.”<\/p>\n

To date, 21 people affected by the storm have applied for financial support through Clutha District Council’s mayoral relief fund, Jenkinson said.<\/p>\n

The fund\u00a0was still open, and still taking donations, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Katie Todd of RNZ A storm that lasted minutes has equated to at least a year’s work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-251725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}