Phone, pyjamas, shoes and insulin - all a pensioner has left after cyclone

Friday, 24 February 2023

Flood water ripped through Chrissy Atkinson's home at the Napier Golf Club.

Her phone, a pair of shoes, her insulin, and the pyjamas she was wearing - this is all 71-year-old pensioner Chrissy Atkinson has to her name after Cyclone Gabrielle.

Her car, a 20-year-old Holden, is a wreck, surrounded by knee-deep silt halfway down the first fairway of the Napier Golf Club.

Atkinson cries as she approaches the bedraggled remains of what was her much-loved home of 12 years, out the back of the golf club, where she spent 27 years working behind the bar before retiring in November.

Belongings, many of them treasured, lie ruined amongst the silt. A 1910 piano she loved is nowhere to be seen, presumably another item amidst the thousands strewn through the orchards, vineyards and paddocks of the Heretaunga Plains.

The water line left by floodwaters can be seen on the walls of Chrissy Atkinson's home at the Napier Golf Club.

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Chrissy Atkinson's home at the Napier Golf Club.

Atkinson, who’s been a well known figure in Napier’s music circle since the 1980s, was asleep in her house when she was woken by strange noise about 6am on Tuesday, February 14.

Chrissy Atkinson had lived in the house for 12 years and had worked at the bar of the golf club for 27 years.

“I put my feet down, and thought ‘oh my god, water’ and quickly put my sneakers on. It was still dark, and I didn’t really know what to do,” she said.

Fortunately the club’s accounts administrator Jan Clark called John Hatton, who lives in a flat above the clubrooms and asked him to check on Atkinson.

John got in his SUV and drove the 100-odd metres through swift rising water to Atkinson’s home, got her in the vehicle and drove back to the clubhouse.

“It’s been a dear home. I really loved living here,” Atkinson said.

“By the time he got to me the water was really rushing. It was just a torrent. When he opened my door it just flooded in,” she said.

She had just enough time to grab her phone and her insulin for her diabetes before fleeing the house.

“There was no time to get anything else. It was like a tsunami. It was incredible. I just grabbed John’s t-shirt and followed him to his car,” she said.

Atkinson joined a small group of others who had fled their homes at nearby Waiohiki. They looked on from the second floor of the clubrooms as swirling water surrounded the building and washed items away.

There is a waterline around the walls of the house at about 1.5m high.

“Everything’s ruined,” said Atkinson, who has four children and eight grandchildren.

“If it hadn’t been for Jan and John I don’t think I’d be here,” she said.

She was insured. “It wasn’t a big insurance, but anything will help, won’t it”.

She will stay with friends until she gets a permanent home. Until the cyclone it had been her plan to remain in the house.

“It’s been a dear home. I really loved living here,” she said.

“Please, in your story, please say that I know I am lucky and that feel so much for those who have suffered so much.”