92-year-old blacks out as floods devastate Auckland retirement village

Monday, 30 January 2023

Flooding wreaks havoc across Auckland.

Alister Chambers can’t remember how he escaped the floods after water began gushing through his slider door.

But the 92-year-old does remember waking up on a stretcher on the top floor of Arvida Parklane retirement village in Auckland’s Sunnynook.

The region was slammed by an unprecedented level of rain on Friday, killing four people and closing critical infrastructure, including train tracks and Auckland International Airport.

“He was in the rising water, and he thought ‘this doesn’t look good’. But he’s very vague on what happened next,” his daughter, Claire Scott, said.

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Chapman has been living in Parklane retirement village alone since his wife was moved to a care facility in 2022.

“The water was so high and so intense that the fridge fell over. All the furniture has been knocked around. The bed got moved by the storm.”

Scott, 63, called her father – who uses a mobility scooter – multiple times during Friday’s storm but never got an answer.

“He does sometimes leave his phone off the hook, so I thought that was it. But it turns out the water had reached the power points and fried it,” she said.

Chambers had been living at Parklane since his wife was moved to a hospital-level care facility in July 2022.

Images of the devastation at Parklane following the floods.

The flash flood left him confused and bewildered, Scott said.

“He keeps asking me, ‘what’s going to happen? Where am I going to go?’”

Scott didn’t realise the extent of the flooding until she went to check on her dad on Saturday morning.

The floodwaters had risen to a metre in Chambers’ home and destroyed his belongings.

“He had no clothes. We couldn’t open the drawers because they were all swollen.

“Everything is damaged. Everything is gone,” Scott said.

Even Chambers’ mobility scooter was lost to the floods.

“Anything that's over a metre is totally damaged, gone. I don’t think the staff were prepared – nobody was for anything like this,” she said.

Chambers had since moved in with his daughter, but it was only a temporary solution.

”Dad’s staying with us for now, but we both work and can’t be around him as much as he needs. I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Chambers’ wife also died three days after the floods, leaving him “double hit”, Scott said.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said.

Scott didn’t think Arvida Parklane retirement village had a disaster management plan for situations like this.

“I want to know what the plan is, but it seems like the village has no idea what to do,” she said.

Arvida chief executive Jeremy Nicoll said Parklane had an emergency response plan which was carried out on Friday night.

“All of our residents were accounted for and supported into temporary accommodation if needed, while some decided to stay with their families.

“Work to ensure the safety of the affected areas commenced on Saturday. We’ll continue to support all of our residents and also focus on the assessment of the impact,” Nicoll said.