Hundreds spend night in evacuation centres as heavy rain hits parts of NZ

Saturday, 17 July 2021

Army vehicles are operating in Westport as the bank of the Orowaiti River bursts.

Hundreds of South Island residents have spent Saturday night on mattresses and sleeping bags in evacuation centres, with no idea when they will be able to return home – or what they will find once they do.

Entire townships had to be evacuated on Saturday as floodwaters continued to rise while heavy rain pounded the top of the South Island and Wellington region.

Just before 5pm on Saturday, the 430 residents of Spring Creek township near Blenheim were advised to evacuate after floodwaters went over a stop bank between Blenheim and Picton. A short while later all of Tuamarina township was also evacuated.

This followed earlier evacuations in Renwick and part of the Lower Wairau.

A youngster plays in the flooded road on the Esplanade in Westport after the Buller River inundated it with water during the state of emergency.

* Man rescued from campervan rooftop by rescue chopper as floodwaters surrounded him

An emergency alert sent by West Coast civil defence on Saturday evening said Westport residents who had not yet evacuated their homes should shelter in place.

* Mandatory evacuations as West Coast's Buller River rises due to heavy rain

Lisa Gregory outside her house in Westport which has been flooded during a state of emergency which has been called in the West Coast town due to flooding.

By 6pm on Saturday, almost half of the residents in the West Coast town of Westport had been evacuated in what Buller mayor Jamie Cleine called “an evolving situation”.

Cleine said just over 2000 of the town’s roughly 4500 residents have had to evacuate their homes.

About 8:30pm on Saturday, an alert was sent to residents in Westport by Civil Defence saying those that had not yet evacuated should shelter in place.

A resident of Westport’s Brougham St paddles up his driveway during the July 2021 flood.

Lisa Gregory, who was working in the Emergency Operations Centre, popped back to check on her Gladstone St property on Saturday afternoon, but like many in the area, knee-high water meant she was unable to get inside.

“Not being able to get home will present some challenges,” she said. “Like finding temporary accommodation with a large dog.”

While she was concerned about the damage to her home, she was more concerned about her neighbours as one was elderly and the other had young kids.

Some residents just outside the evacuation zone said they were staying put, despite river water gushing through their properties.

Jay Phibbs, along with his wife Jessica and four kids, did not intend to leave their rental property on Saturday night – despite floodwaters being so deep on the street outside, his son could kayak in them.

The family had only lived in Westport for a few months. Jay had been running a pump for two-and-a-half hours to stop water inundating the house, and was confident they would be okay.

Part of Queen Charlotte Drive between Havelock and Cullen Point in the Marlborough region is washed away by flood water.

Jessica was less sure. “[We] moved here three months ago, and we’re about to lose it all.” Water was an inch from their back door, she said, it climbed nearly a foot in the time it took the family to go to the supermarket to get supplies.

Emergency and rescue staff were kept busy not only helping people evacuate flood stricken areas, but also rescuing people from the floodwaters, and clearing blocked roads.

The Buller District was one of two regions where a state of emergency was declared over the past couple of days.

In Marlborough a state of emergency was declared by midday on Saturday as residents were evacuated in north Renwick as the Wairau River began spilling over the stopbank at Conders Bend. The river had also washed out a bridge along Northbank Rd, north-west of Renwick, isolating about 25 properties.

Evacuations in Spring Creek and Tuamarina township followed a few hours later.

Members of the New Zealand Defence Force assist residents in the West Coast town of Westport where hundreds of residents have had to evacuate their homes due to the rising floodwater.

Westport residents who were evacuated on Friday night were told on Saturday evening they would need to spend another night with family and friends or at one of the community welfare centres.

Local Controller Bob Dickson said that the Buller River conditions were still 'extremely high and dangerous'. He said the situation would be reviewed mid-morning on Sunday.

According to NIWA's hydrodynamics scientist Richard Measures flood levels at Buller were the highest they've been since the 1926 major flood. This was based on data collected at NIWA's Te Kuha monitoring station.

Aerial photographs of Westport show the scale of the flooding. Credit: Stu Gorrie, helicopter pilot for Garden City Helicopters in Greymouth.

On Saturday 14 personnel from Burnham Military Camp were assisting on the West Coast. This included liaison officers in the West Coast emergency coordination centre in Greymouth and the Buller District emergency operations centre in Westport, as well as soldiers assisting with evacuations using four Unimogs and one HX58 medium heavy operational vehicle.

Rescue missions

Helicopters helped throughout Saturday doing surveys of the flood levels on the West Coast and rescuing people who had been cut off by floodwater.

Five people were rescued from floodwaters south of Picton after two vehicles were caught at Tuamarina, along State Highway 1, on Saturday afternoon.

New Zealand Army personnel are supporting Buller Emergency Management with the flooding in the area.

Rising waters had shut numerous roads to the portside town of Picton, including State Highway 1 to the south and Queen Charlotte Drive to the east, with no other detours available.

In the Motueka Valley, a man had to climb through the skylight of his campervan so he could be plucked from raging floodwaters by a helicopter crew on Saturday morning.

The man had been camping out by the river for the past three days, and while he was sleeping the floodwaters had engulfed his vehicle and campervan.

The alarm was raised by Baton Valley farmers Alistair Webber and Carol McKeever – who were checking on the flood damage to their farm when they spotted the campervan submerged on the other side of the river.

In Wellington, which had been battered by gales, a number of roofs were blown off houses and windows blown in overnight, the fire and emergency service said. There had also been a number of slips on roads throughout the wider Wellington area.

Wellington Water asked locals on Saturday to limit their water use until further notice as the heavy rainfall had resulted in high levels of cloudy water in the bores supplying Greytown and Featherston.

“This is similar to the events in recent weeks which resulted in an unexpected interruption to the water supply,” said chief advisor of drinking water Laurence Edwards.

Meanwhile, dog owners were asked to keep their dogs away from the Hutt River and Wellington Harbour beaches as heavy rain may have washed dead possums poisoned with 1080 down the river into the harbour.

Staff would be checking for dead possoms from Petone to Pencarrow, and from Upper Hutt to Petone, once the Hutt River water level has gone down. Warning signs would be put up on Sunday.

The floods and heavy rain caused several road closures across the South Island that led to Westport, Tākaka, Collingwood, Murchison, Springs Junction and Nelson being effectively isolated due to state highway closures.

About 9pm on Saturday, the State Highway 67 Buller bridge and State Highway 6 along Coast Road were reopened. Buller Emergency Management advised people to only travel if it were essential to do so.

The wild weather also caused significant flight disruptions with Wellington, New Plymouth and Nelson being the worst affected areas, said Air New Zealand. The impact on flight schedules were expected to continue into Sunday.

The worst is over

The worst of the wet weather has passed for most of the country, with severe warnings expected to “fizzle out” overnight or early on Sunday.

Metservice forecaster Aidan Pyselman said there would be “a vast improvement” on Sunday for all areas hit by the extreme wind and rain of Friday afternoon and Saturday.

He said the extreme weather warning for Buller was set to end at 3am, and other severe warnings would “basically fizzle out either [Saturday] evening or overnight.

“In the morning [on Sunday], we're still going to be seeing showers over the Buller and in western Nelson, mostly over the ranges, and it's looking like that for much of the day.”

Pyselman said those showers might make their way towards Marlborough as the day progressed, but at levels much lower than seen on Saturday, though people should still be wary as “those areas will be so waterlogged, it wouldn’t take much to take them over”.

The rest of the South Island would also see significant improvements, but could still expect showery weather and light winds - “nothing like the deluge they’ve had today [Saturday].”

He said it was a similar story in the lower North Island, with some severe wind forecast in Wellington overnight but due to end early on Sunday.

“There is a front that crosses the top half of the North Island [Sunday] afternoon, with light rain and possibly thunderstorms, but the main event is now moving to the east of the North Island.”