Wellington: A Cabinet committee and regional ministerial leads were appointed on Tuesday to help coordinate New Zealand’s response and recovery from cyclone Gabrielle which lashed the 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, while Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty will also be members, reports Xinhua news agency.
“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.
The government has provided an initial support package of NZ$50 million for businesses, farmers and growers, as well as injecting an extra NZ$250 million 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 NZ$13 billion.
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 February 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.
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