Nelson faces years of recovery following last month's devastating flooding, the city's mayor says.
Severe weather caused flooding which damaged dozens of houses, wrecked roads and caused multiple land slips. Many people are still unable to return to their homes.
"It's the big clean-up, the big-fix up", mayor Rachel Reese told Breakfast. "It's going to take some time but, still great community spirit."
"If you were in the main street in Nelson today, you might not know anything's gone on because it looks good, people are there but we go back into the hills and around the river where we've had flooding and a lot of slips, there's a lot of pain for people."
The area's two-week long state of emergency ended on Wednesday, but 91 homes in the region are still red stickered and 103 remain yellow stickered.
Rachel Reese praised her community's spirit but said "a lot of pain" remained. (Source: Breakfast)
"Our big task at the moment is actually fixing underground infrastructure so that they can have running water when they go back into their homes," Reese said.
"The anxiety is not knowing what happens next and that's what we're really working closely with them on now."
READ MORE: Atmospheric river that devastated Nelson a record-breaker
And it's too early to say whether everyone would be able to return to their homes.
The Student Volunteer Army were out in full force helping. (Source: 1News)
"We've got really good support at the moment in the Mayoral Relief Fund but that's for just immediate need, it's not going to be what we use to undertake the repair," Reese said. "So that's going to be a big discussion with us, with central government and also looking at other funds that can come into the region."
"It's years of recovery."
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