Three days since Cyclone Gita battered Taranak, the region is still struggling to get back on its feet.
Some 950 people are without power and it will be at least another week before normal water supplies resume
New Plymouth residents are filling up their water bottles from a tanker, but Civil Defence Minister Kris Faafoi is not laying any blame.
"Look, it's obviously causing disruption here, but you can't foresee that kind of thing happening," he said.
The water pipe damaged in Tuesday's storm was fixed last night, but the 'boil water' notice will remain for seven days.
Normal water supply is unavailable in some areas, while others need water to be boiled and others are completely unaffected.
"If this happened in another 10 days, we would have a back-up supply where people would still be asked to boil water, but we wouldn't have had a loss of supply," said New Plymouth District Mayor Neil Holdom.
"If it happened in three years' time, people wouldn't have noticed anything at all."
Power has been restored to 24,000 homes, but 950 customers remain without power.
"There are some areas where we don't know much damage has been done, especially inland Taranaki, and we're still working on a restoration plan," said Powerco network operations manager Phil Marsh.
"So it may be two more days before some of our remote customers get back on supply."
As many as 30 schools will remain closed until Monday, but the region's main hospital is back to full capacity.
The State of Emergency will continue until the boil notices are lifted.
The local council is asking people to do the right thing and obey the notices until they are lifted.
Meanwhile, Civil Defence officials in Nelson and Tasman have lifted the state of emergency.
But fuel restrictions are being kept in Golden Bay, which is still cut off after a series of slips on the Takaka Hill Road.
Contractors are now working on clearing more than a dozen slips.
Newshub.
