Flood damage likely to cost 'tens of millions' of dollars
Saturday, 20 August 2022
As the trees dropped like missiles, and floodwaters rose “insanely fast”, Glenn Holmes frantically tried to save his business.
It was a hopeless task. His archery business was washed away after floodwaters swept through the property over three long days.
But Holmes says he is grateful that his house was spared.
Others were not as lucky and lost everything. The cleanup has begun after floods and heavy rain left a trail of destruction in the Nelson Marlborough region, forcing more than 1200 people from their homes and causing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of damage.
**READ MORE:
* Cars crushed, house cut off as downpours cause slips, road closures in Wellington
* Rai Valley home carried down hill and on to road by landslide
* Northland, South Island roads slowly reopen as floodwaters recede, slips cleared
* Volunteers help clear 'foot deep' mud from driveways, gardens
* Clouds part over Nelson to reveal fuller picture of the damage
**
The Wellington region was also hit hard, with slips taking out roads, crushing cars, and threatening homes.
Holmes said he worked frantically to save what he could, but rapidly rising floodwaters were just “too fast”.
“It's an insane amount of water that has come down, and it was very quick.”
While Holmes’ house, which was on the same property, had escaped floodwater, the area around his business had been “decimated” by overflow from the Maitai River.
“Its heartbreaking, that area had been well set up for my business, and now it's the opposite, it's just a mess.”
It wasn’t only the flooding that was cause for concern, Holmes said the “eerie” sound of trees plummeting from the cliff behind the property was frightening for the family.
“They were like missiles.”
Holmes and his family had avoided evacuation, as the debris from the slips had been going into the river, avoiding his home, but many on the street had not been as lucky, he said.
The devastation across the region will take years to repair, if it even can be.
As most weather warnings were lifted on Saturday, the Insurance Council estimated the cost of the flooding will likely run to tens of millions of dollars across the country, though the exact amount won’t be known for weeks.
And while the financial cost is still being calculated, the personal tolls of homes, belongings and livelihoods lost in the carnage are still emerging. More than 1200 people from 508 homes were evacuated and displaced in the upper South Island while slips and flooding in Wellington saw roads closed and residents forced from their houses.
Nelson mayor Rachel Reese said some of those evacuated “will not be able to go back to their homes” and Tasman mayor Tim King said the effects would be long-lasting and “a number of people will need ongoing support to bring their lives back to normal”.
The “atmospheric river” bearing down on the top of the South Island saw more than a metre of rain fall in four days, and a state of emergency declared in parts of Nelson and Marlborough.
At Nelson Airport the monthly average for all of August is 80mm. By Saturday morning the monthly total was already sitting at 296mm, with 89.2mm falling on Wednesday alone.
On Saturday morning, Riverside Motel owner Ali Phillips was surveying the moat surrounding her property and covering what used to be her garden.
The dirty brown water surged through her Maitai riverside section property on Wednesday, forcing four lots of guests to evacuate using ropes tied between balconies and sweeping away some of her belongings.
“I just can’t take it in. I don’t know what to say, you’re sort of in shock. You tell people, but you just can’t describe it. Then you send them a photo, and they say ‘my God’.”
She was keen to get stuck in to sorting out the mess but with water still knee-high through the motel’s downstairs level the work would have to wait. “I’ve got friends coming on Monday, it will be a huge job.”
As Phillips mulled the massive cleanup ahead, Nelson resident Lorraine Neumann waded through knee-high mud trying to save a pink rose planted in memory of her daughter Carryn.
Wearing a plastic rubbish bag over her clothes, the retired GP dug into the slip covering a swathe of her section to try and rescue the plant that reminds her of Carryn, who died of breast cancer in 2014.
Neumann’s lived in the property for 21 years and despite some smaller slips and runoff happening in the past she never expected the current devastation.
Although some of her neighbours described hearing a roar as the slip crashed down, it was another noise that roused her on Saturday morning.
“At 10pm [on Friday], everything was intact,” she said. “At 3am, I woke to the sound of an emergency truck.”
And although the water running under and beside her house hadn’t made it inside the property, the news wasn't looking so good as she dug into the mud covering the spot where the rose was planted.
“I don’t think it’s going to make it.”
But while some Nelsonians were able to start or plan their cleanups, others found themselves unable to return to their properties.
On Thursday, a slip slammed through David Pattinson’s house, shifting the building on its foundations and filling his lounge and kitchen with mud.
It sounded like the house was screaming, a digger operator later told Pattinson, who’d evacuated two hours earlier with his pet bird and a packed bag.
“These things always seem to happen to somebody else, you see it on the news, and you think it won’t happen to you.”
With the house now red-stickered, Pattinson can’t reach any of his belongings; further down the shared driveway his neighbours Annie and Terry Whall worked late into the night shovelling enough mud to divert the water only to have their work undone by further slips.
“I haven’t had much sleep, I don’t know what I’m running on,” Annie said.
Nicole Macdonald’s nana and her friend barely escaped their house before it was swept off its foundations in the early hours of Saturday morning. The pair felt movement about 3.30am and fled as a mudslide pushed the rental property several metres down the hill and onto the road.
They sought shelter at a neighbour’s home, along with other Ronga Valley residents, but have lost everything, Macdonald said.
“Though we are absolutely grateful and thankful for their safe escape, they had to leave all possessions and belongings which will mostly be irreparable after the deluge came through the property.”
While Nelson bore the brunt of the damage, heavy rain also caused havoc in other parts of the country.
In the Wellington suburb Melrose, several cars were crushed on Saturday as heavy rain sent a retaining wall, pathway and trees crashing onto a road below; one of about 130 weather-related incidents reported to the city’s council since Thursday morning.
The slip was made up of roughly 50 cubic metres of material, the council’s chief infrastructure officer Siobhan Proctor said.
Eight properties had been evacuated in the past 24 hours, including in Seatoun and Crofton Downs and roads around the region were affected by slips and flooding. Residents of three houses evacuated on Thursday after a slip in Khandallah were still unable to return to their houses.
Insurance Council regulatory affairs manager Greig Epps expected it would be “a couple of weeks” before it had an estimate of the likely cost of the flooding.
But the council said in a statement there was “no doubt this will run into tens of millions of dollars across New Zealand.”
The council might begin to get a sense of the volume of possible claims on Monday or Tuesday, and expected to put out advice in conjunction with the Earthquake Commission on Sunday to help those who might need to make claims.
As of Saturday, flood victims were still in transit, Epps said.
Last year insurers paid out a record $321 million for claims related to extreme weather.
That annual figure was up from $274m of extreme weather related claims in 2020.
The Government contributed $200,000 to the Nelson Tasman Mayoral Relief Fund on Thursday.
Additional reporting by Tom Pullar-Strecker, Katarina Williams, Frances Chin and Jennifer Eder