Cyclone Gita has caused flooding, damaged roads and isolated thousands of people in New Zealand's popular tourist destination Golden Bay.
Strong rain caused several landslides, closing the road on Wednesday on Takaka Hill in the Tasman district in the north of the South Island and cutting about 6,000 locals and holidaymakers off from the rest of the country.
The local council advised that while work to clear the road would take several days, food supplies would be shipped to the bay on barges.
The owner of a supermarket in the township of Takaka in Golden Bay told Radio New Zealand that people were queuing outside his store well before it opened. By the afternoon the shop had run out of milk, bread and toilet paper and had only small supplies of canned goods and baby products left.
While the storm dumped considerable amounts of rain, there was no widespread flooding on the South Island's east coast.
"Christchurch appears to have escaped the worst of ex-Tropical Cyclone Gita after the cyclone split and tracked further south than predicted," officials from the island's largest city said on Wednesday morning.
Two provinces were still operating a state of emergency as officials assessed damage to roads and infrastructure in the morning.
Civil Defence director Sarah Stuart-Black said the worst of the weather was over. However heavy rain and high winds were still expected in some areas.
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