Twelve Tāhuna/Queenstown homes are red- or yellow-stickered on Saturday, while contractors work to stop water flowing into properties.
But with the school holidays starting on Monday, local businesses are doing what they can to live up to their reputation as our number-one tourism hotspot.
On Reavers Lane in the middle of town, mates mucked in to clean up the mess and silt.
Armed with shovels and wheelbarrows, they've come from Ōtepoti/Dunedin to help out a relative.
"It's pretty woeful up here especially," said volunteer Jasper Thompson.
"There's a car right there completely covered in, pretty up to the brim in debris, I didn't expect it to be this bad," he told Newshub.
An already-full culvert couldn't handle any more debris.
Instead, it all slipped through properties and piled up where it could - which forced residents out.
"They had to self-evacuate, they're my aunty's tenants. They just had to get out of here. One of them was just at the property at the start of the day. [They were] probably pretty shaken by the event," said Thompson.
Twelve properties have been red- or yellow-stickered in the area while contractors try to divert the water still flowing through.
But 36 hours after the record deluge and no-one has been to help the Reavers Lane residents clean up.
"Yes, help is coming," said Queenstown Lakes District mayor Glyn Lewers.
"We had to assess the risk, we had the geotech engineer up there yesterday. There's still some water coming down. The areas we have to do, we just have to manage that risk," he told Newshub.
Barriers have gone up around Queenstown Cemetery where trees, mud and debris came flooding down on Thursday morning.
It's not known yet if any graves have been unearthed.
"Was this avoidable?" Newshub asked the mayor.
"Again, [I'm] not going to speculate until this event is dealt with," Lewers replied.
Meanwhile, Tāhuna/Queenstown is battling on another front - it's unclear if cryptosporidium is in the town's water supply.
Twenty-nine people are now confirmed cases.
A boil water notice is still in place, but the town's many restaurants and bars have taken matters into their own hands.
"We're hustling and getting filters sent from Auckland," said Blair Impey, CEO of Republic Hospitality Group.
"That will effectively make it potable water and we're good to go really," he said.
As the Remarkables/Tākitimu welcome thousands of skiers and snowboarders, there are no water issues there.
"One thing about ski areas is we're really fortunate we've got our own water supply, up on the mountain, so it hasn't been an issue for us up here," said Ross Lawrence, manager of the Remarkables/Tākitimu ski fields.
The next two weeks are expected to be incredibly busy with school holiday visitors inbound.
"Queenstown is certainly still open. There's some precautions to take, but they're small precautions," Lawrence told Newshub.
"Queenstown's open, it's beautiful, take a look around, and it's safe and we're all doing what we can just as you enjoy it," Impey said.
Further south, Murihiku/Southland's state of emergency declaration has been lifted but Maruawai/Gore remains under a boil water notice for now too.
