Drenched Northland may again get the worst of it, but Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty are being warned to prepare as well, asks Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
Fresh warnings prompt emergency declaration
Northland is bracing for another pounding from heavy rains after a weekend deluge that has already flooded homes, triggered massive slips, and forced over 300 evacuations. An orange heavy rain warning is in place for both Northland and Coromandel, with Metservice forecasting up to 160mm of rain in the 24 hours to 1am Thursday for Northland and Coromandel advised to expect “a total of 200 to 250 mm of rain on top of what has already accumulated”. There’s a high chance the warning for both regions will be upgraded to red, meaning dangerous rivers, flooding, slips, road closures, driving hazards, and outages.
In response, Whangārei District Council yesterday declared an “extremely rare” precautionary state of emergency, requested by Civil Defence controller Victoria Harwood and signed by mayor Ken Couper. The declaration, which is in place for seven days, unlocks powers like ordering evacuations – often the key reason for such moves – plus road closures and requisitions to protect life under the Civil Defence Act. Speaking to Newstalk ZB, Couper stressed: “We don’t issue a state of emergency lightly, and partly it is to ask people to take things seriously… keep safe and look after your mates.”
Winds and rain loom for the upper North Island
Further south, Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Waitomo and Taupo are under a strong wind watch from 8am today, with easterly winds nearing severe gales in exposed areas; residents are advised to secure outdoor furniture and other loose items around their property. Meanwhile the Bay of Plenty, including Rotorua, will go under an orange heavy rain warning from 1pm today. “Slips, fallen trees and difficult driving conditions are possible, so please postpone travel and outdoor activities if you can,” Bay of Plenty Civil Defence posted on Facebook. MetService meteorologist Katie Lyons told the Herald the weather system may briefly reach tropical cyclone level, but it would only be semantics. “[Whether] it ends up being classified as a tropical cyclone in the tropics at some point, even for a short period of time, it doesn’t affect the weather that it will bring for New Zealand”.
A heavy toll on Northland’s east coast
Even as they brace for another deluge, Northland residents are already tallying the damage from the weekend’s rain, which slammed east coast communities, washing out roads, bridges and creating slips that isolated a number of settlements and flooded homes, businesses and paddocks. Around 300 people were evacuated from Whangārei campgrounds to nearby marae, while 1News reports that Ngātiwai iwi opened its Tuparehuia (Bland Bay), Ngāiotonga (Punaruku), Ōtetao and Mōkau marae to shelter locals displaced by flooding. On Facebook, the iwi’s trust board said the community was reeling. “While we endured Cyclone Gabrielle, the impacts we are seeing now feel even more severe in some areas.”
Heartbreak in hard-hit Ōakura
Tiny Ōakura beach was one of Northland’s worst affected settlements, with RNZ’s Kim Baker Wilson and Peter de Graaf reporting mud-caked roads, fully submerged paddocks and garages flooded – including one with the owner’s boat set afloat inside. Shanne McInnes was alerted by his car alarm and got out of bed to find metre-high floodwater: “Everything was floating, including the boat on its trailer.” Donna Kerridge said she lost the whole first storey of her home: “Our bedroom, our shower is full of mud, it’s up over hand basins, up the wall, it’s all up to chest high the flooding that came through.”
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching story came from Pattinson Wetere, who told RNZ of his midnight battle to save his partner from the waters. He described how, in the rush to escape, she got hooked against the fence on the barbed wire: “By the time I had noticed, I put my hand down, ripped what she was wearing, we locked hands, me on one side and [grandson] Dayton on the other, like a human chain, and we pulled her out of the current and through the gate.”
