‘Like a tsunami’: the role of forestry waste in New Zealand’s cyclone devastation

Te Waiotu Fairlie, 15. Logs line the beaches around Gisborne and Hawkes bay after the cyclone washed enormous amounts of forestry waste downstream and through communities, damming rivers and causing catastrophic damage. Photograph: Brennan Thomas/The Guardian

The sky over Wairoa was blue. After a long night of rain and winds, the sunrise had brought clear skies, the kind of bright, washed cerulean that arrives after a storm.

“It was a beautiful day,” says Terina Henare in the homestead that has been home to her family for generations. Early in the morning, she likes to wake up and look out over the grass behind the house, to the trees and marae [Māori meeting house] in the distance.