Team leader and national emergency response team director Kevin Lockley from South Taranaki said the participants were selected because of their general farming backgrounds, fencing skills and ready availability away from their usual work.
They are plant operators and tanker drivers from throughout Fonterra’s 30 sites and just some of the 98 trained emergency response members on call nationwide.
Lockley has been doing this work since before the formation of Fonterra and works on emergency response, hazardous substances and compliance at the Whareroa plant, Hawera.
Most of the responses he has led have been after floods or storms, about 12 in the past decade, including the Kaikoura and Christchurch earthquakes and the Edgecumbe and Manawatu floods.
“Some conversations beforehand with Federated Farmers on the West Coast helped us select the right mix of people for the tasks.
“This means we can work autonomously, fixing fences, while farmers can focus on other important jobs on the farm.”
The team stayed in a farmhouse at Arahura, a little north of Hokitika, and worked in the district for the first week.
Because accommodation was hard to find in the south they then commuted to farms in the Franz Joseph and Fox Glacier areas after the Waiho bridge was replaced.
Travelling time was 90 minutes each way and the team members also had their grocery shopping, cooking and laundry to do.
Nevertheless, they had worked every day since arriving on the coast with three utilities loaded with fencing gear on Wednesday, April 3, and were looking forward to getting home for the Easter holiday, Lockley said.
Arahura sharemilker Mark van Beek said the team members must have spent eight or nine days on two farms belonging to the Mawhera Incorporation just fixing boundary fences and lanes.
Many fence lines, especially the seven or eight-wire boundary fences, were completely tangled with debris or buried in silt.
It was quicker and more economical to put in a brand-new fence, van Beek said.
About half of the farm on which van Beek has 500 milking cows and 300 replacements was inundated by the floodwaters of the Arahura River, amounting to 100ha.
A further 40ha or a third of the second Mawhera dairy farm was also flooded.
Born and raised on the Coast, he said he had seen big floods before but nothing like this.
An older neighbour in the valley said that was the biggest in 80 years.
He estimated the team erected between 20km and 30km of fencing in total.
Having the help meant milking could continue, once-a-day, to the planned end of the season when farm workers would begin rolling up the old fences and restoring races and subdivision.
“It will take at least 18 months to completely clean up and get new pastures established although we have had follow-up rains which have washed silt off some of the grass.”
Fonterra continued to pay the team their normal hourly rates while they were on the Coast.
Federated Farmers, as the lead agency, did the arranging of farms with needs and the right machines and materials to be on hand, like post rammers.
Lockley said Fonterra’s philosophy is to help all farmers who need it and not just the co-operative’s members.
