Rural community hit hard by quake

Monday’s quake has hit the rural community hard, leaving farmers without power and affecting vineyards in the busy bottling period. The earthquake has struck at one of the busiest times for vineyards in Marlborough and North Canterbury who are bottling wine for export. Part of the land at Trevor Burkhart’s vineyard in Blenheim that backs on to the Opawa River has slumped about a metre. “There are big cracks through the vineyard, we’ve got to try and figure out how to fix that. The problem we’ve got with the vineyard is with ongoing spraying – you can’t actually get the tractors in now.”