Media on the ground in cyclone-hit communities found road-blocks and local people reporting looting, theft and threats backed up with firearms. Meanwhile police and politicians insisted there was no spike in crime and complained of disinformation in the media and online.

Media on the ground in cyclone-hit communities found road-blocks and local people reporting looting, theft and being threatened with firearms - while police and politicians insisted there was no spike in crime and complained of disinformation in the media and online. Did the media sort the facts from the fiction and the emotion?

On Newshub at 6 last Sunday, a woman told Sam Hayes how a neighbour had saved her by breaking into her own home in Hawke's Bay during Cyclone Gabrielle.

"He came and broke the door and said, 'hang on to the sofa'. We floated with the dog across to his fence line," she said.

But other locals told Sam Hayes people breaking into homes in the region weren't doing it to save them.

"Lawlessness, looting and gun violence escalated further in Hawke's Bay," she told Newshub viewers.

"Gangs are coming in or just looters in general are coming in trying to threaten people and stealing stuff," one man told her. "They're trying to steal the food that's been dropped off, filming the streets so that they can come back later," another woman said.

Locals had set up their own roadblocks and Sam Hayes said a traffic worker told her he had had a gun pulled on him by people who refused to stop.

When Esk Valley residents were evacuated again this weekend, Newshub found workers staffing the cordon were accompanied by police officers.

There was plenty more in other media.

One woman told RNZ on Friday a group of people tried to get into her place nearby.

"It is really widespread. We've got a lot of concerned community members," Napier's mayor told Newstalk ZB.

Vodafone's chief executive said on social media generators were stolen from cellphone sites - and a New Zealand Herald reporter heading along State Highway 5 found locals were guarding diggers and trucks restoring the Napier-Taupō road.

Earlier, Newsroom's Bonnie Sumner vividly described how fear and anger about looting was stressing out locals and several Hawke's Bay towns.

"They'll take anything and the gangs are more organised than the police," one woman told her.

The police minister last weekend told gangs to "pull their heads in" and pull their patches off - and pull out shovels and wheelbarrows instead.

But last Tuesday morning, the prime minister told today FM that law and order was still all in order in Hawke's Bay. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details