New Zealand is slowly recovering from Hurricane Gabriel

New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, gave a solemn press conference on Monday morning, a week after Hurricane Gabriel passed: he recalls the balance sheet so far killing 11 and announcing that more than 2,000 people still cannot get through. The police are still trying to contact them. Most of them are located in the northern part of the country, where 15,000 homes are still without electricity and therefore telephones. The state of emergency has been extended by a week, only the third time in history it has been used in New Zealand.

Accompanying Chris Hipkins in this new phase was his Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, who also appointed him Minister for Reconstruction this morning. “We have a lot of work ahead of us,” the minister stressed, announcing $300 million in immediate aid for the economy and road repairs, already stressing that this will not be enough. Grant Robertson asserts that the reconstruction will cost “billions of dollars”.

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