The clean-up will begin in the West Coast's Buller District on Friday after the region was hammered by heavy rain.
A state of emergency was declared on Thursday with many residents forced to evacuate due to flooding.
Buller District Mayor Jamie Cleine told AM while the state of emergency is still in place, things are looking calmer.
Cleine said many residents chose to return home last night when the weather cleared up but 50 to 60 people are still in evacuation centres.
"The weather has been good but there still has been significant flooding so there will be work underway to get them back to their houses first thing today."
"I think today is not going to be too bad but the weekend is looking like there will be heavy rain and things and then the wind might be more into Sunday and Monday."
Cleine said the region just needs "a break from the weather" so they can assess the damage. But he said the clean-up is expected to take some time.
"[There are] major issues right across the district - so significant road and infrastructure issues, some of which we are yet to even have eyes on just because of the way the network was yesterday.
"Some of our smaller communities certainly have compromised water supplies so there will be work underway to either fix or put in an alternative system for them. So there's a lot of work ahead of us over the coming days."
Cleine said the focus will be on repairing main roads and making contact with isolated communities.
"I think some of the stuff will be quite long term… but there will be urgency around those martial roads and state highways and getting access back to the communities."
He said he expects the state of emergency to remain in place for the rest of the day.
