Two major roads in northern Hawke’s Bay have reopened as efforts are made to reconnect the battered region.<\/p>\n
The town was hit hard by flooding during Cyclone Gabrielle, which left many homeless, and cut off supply routes, power and communications.<\/p>\n
Waka Kotahi said two key routes into Wairoa were reopened after being assessed by geotechnical engineers, with State Highway 2 from Raupunga opening on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
State Highway 38 between Wairoa and Frasertown also opened on Monday for the first time since Cyclone Gabrielle hit.<\/p>\n
NZTA regional maintenance and operations manager Jaclyn Hankin said motorists should not expect the highways to look as they did before the cyclone.<\/p>\n
“Temporary traffic management, including temporary speed limits and single lane access, will be in place at various locations and we’re asking people to please take care.”<\/p>\n
With the Waikare River bridge wiped out at P\u016bt\u014drino, significant work was needed at Devil’s Elbow on SH2, Hankin said.<\/p>\n
“It’s likely to take several months before the road between Wairoa and Napier can be opened to traffic safely,” Hankin said.<\/p>\n
“We’re working incredibly hard to restore access but safety remains our top priority.<\/p>\n
“Where roads are closed, it’s to help keep both the travelling public and the crews who are working on these sections of the state highway safe. It also helps us to get the work done more efficiently, ultimately restoring access faster.”<\/p>\n
A locked gate will also be installed at the top of the Mohaka Hill on SH2 to prevent people accessing Waikare Gorge.<\/p>\n
Geotechnical specialists will assess the rest of State Highway 38 this week, with an aim to reopen as far as Tuai later this week or early next week. They will also be looking at SH2 from Raupunga to P\u016bt\u014drino.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two major roads in northern Hawke’s Bay have reopened as efforts are made to reconnect the battered region. The town was hit hard by flooding during Cyclone Gabrielle, which left many homeless, and cut off supply routes, power and communications. Waka Kotahi said two key routes into Wairoa were reopened after being assessed by geotechnical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3565,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions\/3565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}