Keith Gore's brother, Errol, starts the generator to begin waterblasting silt. Photo: Supplied
They're noisy, they spit fumes and they are experiencing a huge surge in demand thanks to Cyclone Gabrielle - generators.
These devices - which convert motive power into electric power - have never been so popular.
"My son-in-law came down from Auckland with 10 generators," Keith Gore said.
He was running one of them for waterblasting and a workshop light at his wrecked Pakowhai orchard home of three decades.
Gore could not have had a better helping hand to distribute around the area.
"Be knackered without it," Gore said.
People have been shopping for generators, from Masterton to Whanganui to Hamilton, to clean up and power up Hawke's Bay.
"Anyone that's got a generator in New Zealand, it's gonna end up in Hawke's Bay," said John Tickner, who runs City Hire, one Napier's two hire companies.
He put four generators on an Air NZ flight the day after low-lying Hawke's Bay flooded, and since then has brought in from outside the district and hired out about 10 truckloads of various sizes, as well as diggers and pumps.
When RNZ called, Tickner was on the hunt for five generators for forestry company Pan Pac, whose mill is out of operation with flood damage.
How would he crack it?
"Knowledge. Knowing who to talk to," Tickner said.
"Like, I had a phone call, early in the piece. Mate had a huge big 40-foot box generator sitting in Christchurch. I said, 'Get going, because give it another day, they'll be squealing for it', and that's what happened."
The phone kept ringing.
"Hurry up, I haven't got time to talk about that," he told one caller, laughing.
The Hire Industry Association said the industry had enough generators, pumps, diggers and the like to cope, and knew from the many disaster lessons they had had, how to cooperate to get it out to people.
Demand for small 2kVA generators to power house fridges was easing as power came back on in Hawke's Bay, all the operators said.
But many businesses and farms were keeping their bigger hired generators in case of the unforeseen.
Ross Hood from media company NZME was dealing with just that, the unforeseen at a small shed among the ruined carcasses of radio transmitters in Pakowhai.
He had brought in a replacement generator for the one there that went under water to get Newstalk ZB back up on the AM frequency. But it was playing up.
"We're trying to get our standby generator going so we can power our standby transmitter to replace the ones that got ruined in the floods," Hood said.
"I've just rung around trying to find [another] generator."
Kennards Hire in Auckland is working closely with Tickner, and has sent Lewis Gough down on deliveries and to help.
"Oh, everyone's scrambling," Gough said.
"There's not a lot of gear left up in Auckland, everything's down here."
Kelvin Dolbel chatted with Gough about the next deliveries.
A police officer until two weeks ago, and now volunteering at City Hire, Dolbel had quite a few generators on hand out back, from 15kg, suitcase-sized 2kVAs, to one the size of a small truck of the type that Quality Bakers had been calling for up till now.
Ross Hood with the ruined AM transmitters that Newstalk ZB uses - and his replacement generator had the gremlins. Photo: Supplied
Retirement homes had coped with 100 kVAs, but it would be a different story if the storm had hit in winter, said Dolbel.
"They would have been going for big generators then, real big ones, for a resthome, so they could run the heating."
As for any company engaged in frozen goods, it would have its own back-up plans, he said.
Out at orchards and farms, demand for generators is not letting up.
At Rissington in the hills west of Napier, small petrol ones are keeping people and stock watered.
Not only was the bridge there taken out, but power supply, too.
Generators are solving the power problem - but introduce a fuel problem of their own, by guzzling it.
Farmer Pete Lynam said the petrol to run them could not be flown in by chopper, for safety reasons, so must go over the now bridge-less river by boat in 20-litre containers.
He had two generators, one for his farm water pumps, and one on spasmodically for the fridge and freezer; 60-litres of petrol might last them one week.
Keith Gore is alot closer to town, but his home on Gilligan Rd in Pakowhai is a long way off getting its usual services back.
It was a tough day on a torrid job in the rain on Thursday, but the yellow generator on the back of the trailer chugged merrily away, regardless of the weather.
Gore agreed, the machine's dependability, when all around was instability, almost made you want to hug it.
"If you're feeling cold, go and hug that one," he said, laughing.
