Claims for Bola damage may come to $60M

Press, 4 May 1988, Page 6

Claims for Bola damage may come to $60M

PA Gisborne Claims for compensation by East Coast landholders may be $2O million more than the $4O million allocated by the Government for losses incurred in Cyclone Bola.

The original amount is likely to be exceeded because of the nature of the package, with. compensataion being paid for loss of value, loss of income and loss of future income, said Mr John Fitzharris, district manager of MAFTech, which is managing the scheme. This interpretation meant that if present trends continued, payments would be well over the $4O million originally estimated. They could go as high as $5O million or $6O million, he said. The Government had announced the $5O million package for cyclone-hit landholders in the North Island with $4O million channelled into the area from Northern Hawke’s Bay and including East Coast. The remainder was for Taranaki and North Auckland. To Monday morning, 398 applications were

somewhere in the system, with 136 notifications of payments in the mail, Mr Fitzharris said. These averaged $33,000 with a range between $B3 and $220,000. Notifications to pastoral farmers averaged $34,000 in payments while horticulturists payments averaged $37,000. MAFTech was working on the basis of receiving 300 applications from Hawke’s Bay and 350 from Wairoa with about 1600 from Poverty BayEast Coast. “We believe the average will change upwards because some of the larger, more complex, claims have yet to be lodged,” Mr Fitzharris said. Isolation of four families in Tauwhareparae area inland from Tolaga Bay is about to end for the first time since Cyclone Bola.

Their access road is expected to be open by Friday after the familes had been cut off for two months, leaving them dependent on helicopter lifts for essential supplies and medical services. With the opening of their access road, less than a week away, all helicopter services through Civil Defence’s disaster recovery' programme ended last Friday, said a liaison officer, Mr Keith Dixon. He said many roads in the district were still marginal, most of them accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles, leaving’ some families vulnerable to being cut off again. But this was the point where disaster recovery stopped and social rehabilitation started. The disaster Recovery Centre in Gisborne will function for about another month.