Cyclone Gabrielle: It's been two weeks, but it could have happened yesterday

Monday, 27 February 2023

Wairoa dog Stevie does its best to avoid the silt after Cyclone Gabrielle brought record rainfall to the region.

It’s been 14 days since Cyclone Gabrielle ravaged the North Island. But looking around, it may as well have happened only a day ago.

Many have swept through their homes, collected what could be salvaged and dumped the rest, often on the berm to await collection. But mud and silt, dumped inside and out of homes is still everywhere.

It chokes grass and vegetable patches, and leaves towns coated in that now familiar browny grey colour.

“The mud is still as if it was the next day, it just happened. We’ve got a lot to do,” Wairoa resident Lorraine Edwards said.

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Edwards lives on Ruataniwha Rd, a long stretch tucked inside a bend of the Wairoa awa, water running on both sides of it.

Wayne and Piri McKenzie survey the damage to their home after Cyclone Gabrielle brought record rainfall to the region.

She and her family live three houses down from her parents, Piri and Wayne McKenzie. When daylight broke on Tuesday, February 14, it was to their house she ran first, as the water encroached on the road.

Piri was still asleep, and woke up to her daughter hollering at her to wake up and prepare the house.

They all became preoccupied trying to save their pig. Its house was on the edge of the river, and pretty soon it was swimming, and struggling to stay afloat.

It took three of them to lift the pig up over the fence.

Wairoa resident Lorraine Edwards watches her son Sampson cool off in a pool of rainwater after Cyclone Gabrielle brought record rainfall to the region.

“My big boy just heaved it up. My dad tried to grab the hairs of its back, and I said that isn’t working because he’s 72. Then [the pig] popped out. About 10 minutes later we looked back and it was covered in water to the roof of its house.”

Before long, the waters had risen further. “[The river] just kept coming this way, it all piled up on the grass. Another 20 minutes after that it was on the concrete.”

They loaded as many items for safekeeping into the family boat and tried to push it out onto the road, now an extension of the Wairoa awa.

The water was already high and they couldn’t tell immediately if the boat was strapped to its trailer. With the river around their shoulders they untied and cut as much as they could and pushed the boat out, only to find water inside as well – the plug was out.

Wairoa resident Lorraine Edwards has been living at her marae’s kohanga reo, where she also works.

“We were sinking. So we got a spud – a potato – so we just chopped that, banged that in the hole, and it worked. We got buckets, tipped out the water and saved all the stuff [Piri] needs.”

Meanwhile a helicopter was hovering above the house surveying the situation. The noise was deafening and the downwash whipped the water up around them.

But Edwards had a hard time convincing her parents to get out of their house and evacuate to the school, where she works and is now living.

A Wairoa resident uses a tractor to clear silt from his front lawn after Cyclone Gabrielle lashed the area with record rainfall.

“Saving them was a mission … my dad wouldn’t leave. It’s just home. He built it all and he couldn’t leave it.”

They wouldn’t even leave when the water started coming through the walls, and the joints in the floor. Someone sacrificed one of Piri’s favourite teatowels to start mopping it up.

“I was screaming, no! But down it went. It was hopeless … Odd things you do, eh. And the things you say. There were funny times.”

Since the flood, the McKenzies’ youngest daughter Lorraine Edwards has been staying at the Ruataniwha Marae kohanga reo (school). Her own home was partially flooded and the damp has been exacerbating her and her children’s breathing troubles.

Wairoa resident George Ataria outside his yellow-stickered home after Cyclone Gabrielle brought record rainfall to the region.

The 18-student school needs to reopen, so Edwards will likely move into the marae. A lot of her belongings are stored in the mattress room until the house is safe – she’s had offers of furniture and supplies to replace flood damaged stuff but otherwise has nowhere to put it all.

The McKenzies have been doing their best to clean for the last fortnight. “We’ve just gotten on with things … we must be succeeding because the area out there is as clear as I’ve ever seen it.”

But there is no denying the flood took them by surprise. On Monday night, Piri had been on the phone to a friend, telling her ‘last I looked, it looks like our awa is behaving itself’.

“It was a shock to wake up in the morning and see it had gone to the other side. I sent another text back, and said ‘well, our awa blew up.’”

At the beginning of State Highway 2 on the edge of Wairoa, George Ataria is not sure where to go next. His house is barely holding together and remnants of mud and silt still coat the inside walls.

Behind the house, a lawn where fruit trees were just beginning to grow is a sea of mud.

He was hosting friends when the storm hit. It seemed fine at first, but within a matter of hours water and mud starting coming into the house. “That’s when we bailed.”

Over the last fortnight, he’s been staying in his car and with friends. The marae have offered him accommodation, but he thinks there are others who need it more. Besides, it’s not long term.

“The marae have been beautiful, with food parcels. But I feel sorry for the people who have moved there. If their homes are condemned like mine, where are we supposed to go after there?”

Wairoa mayor Craig Little said, as the council continued with its recovery efforts, the first priority would be to get the silt out from underneath people’s homes, as no one could move back home if they had “silt up to their floorboards”.

However, many homes would need to have their wall linings pulled off. The flooding would also affect carpets, kitchen units, and showers – with everything needing to be stripped out.

“Because while it might look good on the outside, mould can be growing inside … . we've really just got to make sure that we get it right.”

Little said he understood how people were feeling, and while people were “really resilient,” many were living in maraes or with with friends and family.

The mayor said he did not want to be alarmist but recovery in Wairoa could take “months and months”.

“Honestly, we’re only a small town. We've only got a limited amount of builders and these builders are going to be spread right through Hawke's Bay.”

Little said the biggest thing they could do would be to get some temporary housing, such as small cabins, which would allow people to live on their sections and work on their homes.