Family spent $35k on flood repairs, only to 'lose everything' again in deluge
Wednesday, 1 February 2023
An Auckland family who had to swim to safety have lost all personal belongings in Friday’s flood and the heavy rain which followed on Tuesday – including their recently renovated home.
Catherine Beggs, 65, and her family have survived three Auckland floods in 10 months – but the same can’t be said for her Mt Roskill home.
“The house flooded in March last year. Water came up underneath the house, and down the roof. I ended up having to buy a new roof,” Beggs said.
She said she spent about $35,000 on repairs, which were only finished in November.
**READ MORE:
* Auckland cakery hit by storm, baking supplies ruined
* Three to six months for 95% of flood-damaged Auckland homes to be fully reinstated, says Suncorp
* Price of new and used cars expected to surge as hundreds are written off in floods
* 'It’s heartbreaking': As Auckland schools reopen, teachers' work is just beginning
**
“Then of course on Friday night, the heavens opened up again, and now we’ve lost everything.”
She estimates the damage will cost $60k-$70k to fix this time round, and doesn’t yet know how much her insurer will cover.
Shortly after returning home from the mall on Friday evening, Beggs, along with her 33-year-old daughter, witnessed “tsunami-like waves” washing over her neighbour's fence and into her backyard.
“It was so sudden and the force of water inside the house was so strong.
“It moved our spa pool about 10 feet, pushing the shed into my neighbour's fence and the fence onto his house.
“The water then came up about three feet and was suddenly at my front door. I ran into my kitchen and it was everywhere. It was coming up through the drain and through the dishwasher.”
Pandemonium followed, she said.
“Me and my daughter started screaming at each other. We began packing an emergency bag with medicines and essential papers. It was all we had time for.”
After leaving the cat with a neighbour, Beggs and her daughter had to “swim” up the driveway, seeking shelter for the night at an extended family member’s home.
They returned to their property on Saturday morning, to find all their belongings destroyed and the house sitting in floodwater.
“Everything had been destroyed. Our new carpet, the couches, the cabinets, the television, mattresses and my grandmother’s Bible which was over 50 years old,” she said.
“The entire kitchen will probably have to be rebuilt because it's so mouldy.
“The lounge has been saturated, and you cannot sit on the couch because it's been sitting in sewage water. The bedding has also been floating in water.”
Beggs said if an emergency alert had been sent out sooner, they might have evacuated their home before they had to swim out of it.
“We knew we were going to have rain – but not like that, otherwise we would have prepared for it. It went from heavy drizzle, to having to evacuate, and basically swim up the driveway with water up under my armpits.”
She said the family were still coming to terms with what was lost on Friday, when the house flooded again, for the third time in 10 months on Tuesday overnight.
“This morning I really wanted to scream. I just really wanted to scream at God and the heavens, asking, ‘What more damage can you do?’“
She said some of the furniture on Wednesday morning was growing mould, and had to be removed from the house.
“The insurance company can not come to us until Friday, if they can come to us at all. We've basically lost everything, but we're alive.”
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown on Monday accepted some communications put out during the flood, “including mine and my office”, were “not good enough” and said he was commissioning a full review into the response.
The mayor also said he had asked the Prime Minster for more senior National Emergency Management Agency communications staff, “to ensure we do better”.