Survivors plucked from rooftops as New Zealand cyclone kills three

Military helicopters winched stranded storm survivors to safety in New Zealand, after Cyclone Gabrielle killed three people and displaced 10,500 more.

With the storm now fading into the South Pacific, rescue teams have finally reached regions cut off by days of torrential rain and gale-force winds.

The New Zealand military deployed three NH90 helicopters on reconnaissance and rescue flights to the hard-hit Hawke's Bay area, finding families, pets and workmates clustered on sodden zinc rooftops -- surrounded by a sea of murky debris-filled floodwater.

The disaster has severed roads, collapsed houses and cut power across a swathe of New Zealand's North Island: home to more than three-quarters of the country's five million residents.

The human toll continues to grow.

Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty said that three bodies had now been recovered from storm-hit areas.

They included a woman killed when her house was crushed by a landslip in Hawke's Bay and a victim believed to be a volunteer firefighter trapped by a collapsing home.

About 10,500 people have been displaced and 140,000 are still without power.

Aerial images showed a once bucolic landscape riven with torrents of floodwater, latticed with crumbling roads and scarred by massive landslides.

Cyclone Gabrielle formed off the northeastern coast of Australia in the Coral Sea on February 8, before barrelling across the South Pacific.

It bore down on New Zealand's northern coast, bringing gusts of 140 kilometres an hour.