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Cyclone Affected Roads To Bear Brunt After Rail Slip – Extent of Repairs Cannot be Underestimated
Every week hundreds of freight containers are transported between Auckland and Northland by train, but after a significant slip on the rail line near Helensville these containers will now need to be trucked to Northland despite those roads already being fragile.
Due to the slip near Helensville, the primary railway freight line connecting has been deemed inoperable. The slip itself is significant and encompasses a huge area with 35,000 tonnes of earth blocking over 100m of the track.
"This is pretty heartbreaking to be honest,” Far North Mayor Moko Tepania.
Far North Mayor Moko Tepania expressed disappointment over the situation, citing the millions of dollars recently invested in lowering the tunnels and actually enhance the train line's viability. However, Mayor Tepania expressed hopes that the railway line will be able to be reopened soon to allow goods to be transported to and from Northland via train once again.
Despite looking towards the future, the rail line is significantly impacted and will require repairs from NZ Contractors over several months, in addition to the dozens of smaller slips on the line which will also need to be cleared. With the extensive repairs needed to the railway there are also many roads, bridges, and drainage upgrades that are also likely to be necessary. As such it is expected to be several months before the line can be used again.
"We're looking at 24 to 48 containers a day having to be trucked, and the road obviously is closed at the same time as rail, so they have to do quite extensive detours I understand through Dargaville," Todd Valster of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union said.
Further concerns about the freighting arrangement are for other road users as well as the truck drivers themselves, suggesting that a potential solution is coastal shipping. Both Valster and Tepania addressed the idea in their statements.
Valster commented that "Hopefully somebody's thinking about that. So ,you know we need road, rail and coastal shipping. It's not a versus situation - it's a complementary situation. And you know, look at what Air New Zealand's done - they said okay, let's put some flights on between Napier and Gisborne that they normally wouldn't do because they understand... it's inaccessible at the moment.”
In addition to these transportation challenges and massive repairs on the horizon, Northland is also facing a threat to its power supply due to a significant slip near two towers that supply most of the region. Mayor Tepania expressed concern over the situation and warned that the entire region could lose power.
"It is quite scary. We're taking it very seriously, you know?" said Tepania.
"Civil Defence has warned all of the residents of Northland there is the potential we could lose power to our entire region. So, we know the drill - prepare, prepare, prepare. Fingers crossed.
As a precautionary measure, Northland residents should be doing what they can to prepare for a potential outage. While they hope for the best, they are also making arrangements for a bypass to restore power in the event of an outage. He also drew attention to the plight of families in the Far North who are, even three weeks since the storm, still without power
"Then we'll pray that doesn't actually happen and we can get a bypass done for that slip for that main powerline and you know, carry on. But we just got to hope that it doesn't happen and prepare, should it happen."