Heartbreak and hope: Cyclone Gabrielle one year on

Saturday, 10 February 2024

Lisa and Paul Watson and their children were lucky to escape the flash floodwaters that wrecked their Pakowhai during the deadly cyclone in February last year. The past 12 months have been among their most difficult ever.

On February 14, 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle washed out the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of Hawke’s Bay households. Nikki Macdonald finds out how they’re recovering.

When the spinach boils dry, Pete Marshall knows it’s going to be one of those days.

He likes to cook a feed of greens on the camp stove he’s rigged up in his Pakowhai shed. Because if you don’t have your health right, you don’t have your mental health right.

He’s already had one disaster today – the hydraulic hose broke on a busted motor he’s trying to fix. He really didn’t need that, with the electricians coming to power up the carcases of his and his daughter’s homes on their flood-flattened Gilligan Rd property.

Still, he can cackle about it, as he munches the last of the season’s corn, and watches the helicopter buck and wheel as it sprays his leased apple trees.

Pakowhai flood victim Pete Marshall and his wife have bought a house in Taradale, but he still comes to his Gilligan Rd shed most days for coffee and to work on the property.

“You’ve got to laugh,” was the first thing Marshall said on Valentine’s Day last year, when neighbour Troy Duncan parked his rubber dinghy on Marshall’s roof and used a multitool to open the ceiling cavity, where Marshall had been trapped by the rising floodwaters.

But there wasn’t much laughing in the months that followed.

The 75-year-old slides two filters into a ciggie paper with some tobacco and rolls. He gave up smoking nine years ago, when his granddaughter was born. After Cyclone Gabrielle washed away 44 years of his life’s work, the stress drove him back to it.

Troy Duncan rescues a neighbour from the ceiling cavity of a floodwater filled Pakowhai home.

“Last year I went mad, had a heart attack, lost 16 kilos, blah, blah blah,” Marshall explains. “Because I was worrying too much about what was happening in the future, and I wasn’t sleeping, and I wasn’t eating properly.”

He got professional help and urges others to, too.

With the insurance from the two homes, the Marshalls have bought one house in nearby Taradale. But Marshall isn’t the type to hang in town and pop out for a $6.50 cafe coffee.

So instead, he comes down here most days, to his 28 hectares sandwiched between the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro Rivers. To this silt-smothered red zone that’s little changed from a year ago, when up to 6m of water carried with it livelihoods and dreams.

Like 164 other Napier and Hastings properties containing houses, Marshall’s land and home have been zoned category 3 – too dangerous to live on. Those with properties smaller than 2 hectares can choose a voluntary buyout of both their home and land.

Cyclone Gabrielle washed out hundreds of Hawke’s Bay properties, including most of Eskdale north of Napier. (File photo)

But because Marshall’s property is bigger, he only qualifies for a relocation grant – basically the difference in the land’s value, with and without the right to live on it. That means they could keep the property, but the houses would be removed and they could never live there.

So what does he think of the council’s relocation grant idea? Earlier, Marshall described his forklift as “f…ed”, before politely substituting “broken”.

“We have told them to get ‘broken’.”

But that leaves them in limbo. He doesn’t want to trade away his three children’s future right to live there. But he also doesn’t want to spend $600,000 fixing a house he can’t then insure.

And there’s another risk. While it’s billed as a voluntary process, the authorities could switch to a forced buyout, or change the law to make residents squatters on their own land.

The flood-condemned Pakowhai home of Lisa and Paul Watson looks much the same as it did a year ago, minus the mud.

“Both my wife and I would love to be living back here, but I'm not prepared to take the risk.

“So this is what we call the new normal.”

Not just bricks and mortar

Down the road, past the roaming pukeko and the cop car checking for trouble, is Lisa and Paul Watson’s abandoned house.

“It’s a little bit dire,” says Lisa, of the funereal landscape now greened with weeds.

The Watsons at their Gilligan Rd home, shortly after the Feb 14 2023 flood. (File pic)

The last family to be rescued from Pakowhai now lives in a 3-bedroom rental in Taradale, with one of their three kids bunking down in the lounge. The past 12 months have been among their most difficult ever.

When they first rang their insurer, they were offered about a third of the property’s value. It took until Christmas to settle on a figure they were happy with.

Three months after the flood, the Watsons managed a weekend away, and some smiles.

“It’s just work on work on work,” says Lisa. “Every day is just waking up to a bit of a living nightmare, for that first 10 months.”

The Insurance Council estimates more than 90% of the 57,232 Cyclone Gabrielle claims are now settled. As at 1 December, $1.25 billion had been paid out, of an expected total of $1.73 billion. That makes the cyclone and Auckland Anniversary floods the country’s two largest ever insurance weather events.

The Watsons are looking for a new place. Probably on a hill. Somewhere they can play the impromptu family concerts they so miss. But it’s hard not to compare everywhere to “our little piece of perfection”, Lisa says.

“When the new year ticked over, it felt so good just to leave all that behind. To think, we are going to go and find a new house. We are going to get back to some sense of normal. We’re feeling pretty positive.”

After a 10-month battle to get a fair insurance payout, the Watsons were pleased to see the back of 2023.

But coming here is deflating. Mould spots the ceiling of the brand new master suite. The immovable pizza oven and a few garden pots are about all that’s survived the looters.

“I think we feel quite robbed of time,” Lisa says. “It doesn’t feel like just bricks and mortar, it’s your home. It’s sad, really.”

At least the family wasn’t surviving off the land. Paul could return to some normality – and an income – at his general manager job at Red Steel. Lisa struggled more – she’d started a beauty therapy business just before the flood.

If it were just Lisa and Paul, they’d probably be living out here in a caravan. But the kids don’t want to move back. One has not been able to return.

They are changed, but resilient. They’ve learnt not to sweat the small stuff, Lisa says. But seeing your parents battling, and sometimes breaking, takes a toll.

The view from the Watsons’ roof before they were rescued.

Now the insurance is sorted, the Watsons are talking with Hastings District Council about getting a slice of the council and government-funded buyout scheme. They’re also red-zoned, but because their property is smaller than 2 hectares, they qualify for a full buyout. They reckon it will take at least two months to get a valuation, and up to another 11 months to get an offer.

Hastings and Napier councils say they’ve so far completed 124 initial meetings with category 3 owners, carried out 39 valuations and settled two deals.

Lisa isn’t sold on selling.

Pakowhai Rd resident Nicolaas Slagter is living with his wife in his shed/shop, while he repairs his flood-damaged home.

“I would not give this up for all the tea in China. Maybe it’s a time thing.”

Paul feels differently.

“I would prefer to walk away and start again.”

One thing that rankles is that everyone gets essentially the same buyout terms, whether they’re fully insured, under-insured or uninsured. The councils say that’s because the point is to get people out of harm’s way.

Some uninsured owners are also getting new house fitouts through the Red Cross disaster relief fund. The charity says it has $6 million for more than 600 home bundles for vulnerable households across Auckland, Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay, with 263 delivered so far.

While the Watsons have spent a year feeling lost and “forever in the unknown”, they’re confident they’ll come out OK.

Slagter’s daughter occupies two rented caravans out the back.

“If there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s work hard and get ourselves back on our feet,” Lisa says.

A year in limbo

One street over, in Pakowhai Rd, Nicolaas Slagter is one of many flood-hit residents still in temporary digs. In some areas they’re unmissable. At Omahu, by the Ngaruroro River, every second property has a portacabin out front. In others, sheds or caravans are tucked discreetly behind a munted house, barking dogs the only signpost of continued occupation.

Slagter has got his fruit and vege business back up and running, but the lucrative raspberries won’t produce for another year.

Across Hawke’s Bay, 143 households are still living in places provided by the government’s Temporary Accommodation Service (TAS), including 28 leased cabins.

Slagter and wife Diane initially bunked down at their grandson’s in Flaxmere, but they needed to be closer to reboot their Springfield fruit and vege shop, which meant fixing a greenhouse and replanting.

So in July they moved into a caravan out front, then the implement shed, which doubles as the shop. Past the trolley of corn and crates of onions, eggs and plums is the kitchen, with its white tarpaulin ceiling.

Waiohiki resident Girlie Hawaikirangi returned to her riverside whānau home as soon as she could. While she’s anxious when it rains, she feels safer there than in town.

They’re sleeping in the raspberry sorting room – bed at one end, dining table at the other. And the gas shower and toilet are in the next shed over.

Slagter’s daughter, who also has a house on site, lives in two rented caravans out the back.

At 78, it’s not exactly how Slagter imagined his later years. He can’t put a figure on what they’ve lost. But they’re alive and they reopened the shop in November. The house was insured and the builders are booked to lay the floor.

Although only one street over from the Watsons and Marshalls, the Slagters are category 2C, which means they can repair their homes. You can’t build new though, until the stopbanks are upgraded.

Slagter reckons they’ll be another year in the shed. By then the 100-odd new raspberry canes should be producing.

“We didn’t really realise how much money we made out of raspberries.”

Hawaikirangi is living in the lounge of a 2-bedroom cabin beside her flood-damaged house, as it inches toward completion.

And at least when they can move back they’ll have nice stuff to fill their homes. As well as donated second-hand furniture, Red Cross is promising a new fridge, washing machine, bedding and a lounge suite.

But life is frustrating and they still take one day at a time.

“Yesterday I felt like crap. I think it’s partly because it’s been a year living in limbo.

“But what do you do? You either move forward and you keep going, or you sit in a chair and you say, ‘Oh well, life is too hard’. You just keep plodding on.”

‘I don’t want to go anywhere else’

Slash took out one span of the Redclyffe Bridge at Waiohiki. A temporary fix went restored access in August 2023.

Seven minutes’ drive away at Waiohiki, next to Redclyffe Bridge across the Tutaekuri River, Girlie Hawaikirangi is living in a 2-bedroom cabin beside her whānau house.

The slam of trees and forestry slash against the bridge acted like a cork, pushing the river on to the plains. When the bridge finally broke, Hawaikirangi’s house was first in line, but she was already on safe ground up at Waiohiki Marae.

Until the bridge got a temporary repair in August, her road was a quiet, tui-filled cul-de-sac. Now traffic rumbles by, so loud the 64-year-old has moved her bed from the front bedroom into the lounge, beside the toilet.

At Waiohiki Marae, a new wharekai and civil defence hub is under construction. Waiohiki recovery operations team project manager Joe Tareha has been living in hotel rooms for a year, after giving up his repaired papakainga home to more needy whānau members.

“I just could not sleep. I was tired, listless, lack of energy. So bugger it, I moved up this end.”

When it’s wet, she covers the floors with towels to soak up the mud. When it’s dry, the dust counter on her gate tracks the silt swirling into her asthmatic lungs.

“You know when to put on a mask – and it’s just about all the time.”

But she’s not complaining. She started out in a shell of a cabin up at the cousin’s behind. This place is one of 28 provided by TAS. It has a kitchen and bathroom and room for the portrait of Puhara Hawaikirangi, one of her ancestors, that didn’t fit in the storage container.

There’s no TV, so she binges on old DVDs – Serenity, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Flood victim Kristina Miller shares a wine with former neighbour Tania Thomson, at her newly repaired Awatoto home.

“I’m doing all right, considering,” says Hawaikirangi, hair in a topknot, dressed in a Puna Shearing sweatshirt donated after the flood.

She’s on a sickness benefit but got a decent insurance payout on the house she grew up in, so they’re slowly repairing it. They’ve already insulated and got the lights back on.

She still tears up talking about the flood, which also washed out her daughter’s house up the road. And when rain comes she repacks her getaway bag. But she feels safer here than in town.

“I don’t want to be out there, there’s some real wicked people in town … I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

Miller’s home was trashed by the floodwaters, then again, and again, by looters.

Up the hill at the marae, a whiteboard to-do list shows the scale of the community’s recovery task: temporary accommodation, silt removal, infrastructure, housing rebuild, hauora health and wellbeing, community resilience.

Of the 80-odd households displaced, about 40% have returned. Some, like Hawaikirangi, are in TAS cabins. Ngāti Kahungunu iwi is providing another 12.

Some houses were insured, others weren’t. But they’re getting help, with funding from Te Puni Kokiri, Internal Affairs, charitable trusts, donations and the Red Cross, says Waiohiki recovery project director Dick Hilton (Ngāti Pārau).

There’s still silt to clear, private roads to rebuild and bores and sewer systems to check. And a new wharekai kitchen and dining building, which will double as a civil defence hub, should be finished by November. They’re also helping with insurance issues.

Waiohiki recovery project manager Joe Tareha (Ngāti Pārau) says after the flood, insurers low-balled everyone. Some whānau didn’t realise they didn’t have to take the first offer, so they can now only afford to fix 25-30% of their house.

Tareha lived in the flooded 10-home papakainga behind the marae. When it was repaired, he gave his home up to more needy whānau, so he’s spent the past 12 months in five different hotels, complete with domestic disputes and gang conflicts.

Awatoto was drowned by contaminated floodwaters.

He can’t wait to return to Waiohiki.

“I’m excited about coming back, even in a cabin.”

The community’s lowland homes are currently zoned 2C, which means they can repair but not build new, until Hawke’s Bay Regional Council gets approval and funding to upgrade the stopbanks.

“We are well on the road to recovery,” Hilton says.

‘Probably the worst year of my life’

Back towards Pakowhai, then out to the coast, is the Napier suburb of Awatoto. Because Cyclone Gabrielle’s impact was so localised and spread out, it’s easy to miss. Which is why flood victims feel forgotten. In Napier and Hastings, life goes on as normal.

At least some normality has returned to Kristina Miller’s existence.

“It was probably the worst year of my life.”

Before Gabrielle took out her home, she lost her nephew Daniel Miller to the Auckland floods.

Then came the looting. Awatoto residents were evacuated a second time when the silt oozing through their properties was found to be contaminated. They’d just put out piles of stuff to keep.

Looters even took the lightbulbs and door handles. Then she bought a caravan. It was stripped before she got to live in it.

The plumber put $9000 of bathroom fittings in the sleepout, behind temporary fencing. All gone, another delay.

The Harrises have signed on to a rental for a year, after being unable to get a mortgage to buy a new home.

“That was pretty hard. People just kept coming back and back and back, taking whatever they could.”

But just before Christmas, Miller finally moved back in to her repaired corner cottage. Another neighbour has also returned, making her feel a little safer.

Now she can share a wine with former neighbour Tania Thomson. After being in one house for six years, Thomson is now in her fourth rental in 12 months, having struggled to find anywhere that would accept her three cats, dog and sulphur-crested cockatoo. Thomson, 55, wouldn’t feel safe returning here though.

The Harrises no longer go out to the Esk Valley site of their broken home and doggy daycare business. (File photo)

“You just don’t know what is going to happen. I like mother nature, but I don’t trust her.”

While Miller’s insurer – AA – was amazing, the renovation went $40,000 over budget. And her $6000 EQC payout won’t cover the land damage. She’s been quoted $50,000 to fence and clean up the yard. And the council is yet to collect the last load of contaminated silt.

“I’ve lost so much money. And I’ve still got to spend,” says the 56-year-old, who works as head housekeeper at a local holiday park.

Chris Baty’s Eskdale home was untouched by the floods, so he’s now living in an abandoned red zone. (File photo)

Miller can’t fathom how help is allocated. While some have received entire households of new furniture, she got rates relief, some garden tools from Red Cross, and free insulation. Volunteer extraordinaire Trudy Robinson also delivered donated furniture.

“The help has not gone to all the correct places. Some people got brand new everything. They’re still getting food. We’ve just seemed to be irrelevant,” Miller says.

While one woman she knows got a two-bedroom cabin to keep, Emma down the road had to buy a leaky caravan to house herself, her partner and their two daughters. Her eldest moved to Australia, because there was no room for him. They’re rebuilding but are under-insured, so can’t afford to fix their main bathroom.

Nothing remains of Nicky & Ian Dockary’s Esk Valley plum orchard. They’ve bought a house in town, but are struggling to process the loss.

“I don’t want any help,” says Emma. “Because I know there’s people that are worse than us. All I want is us to go back to normal. To just have a front fence so people can’t look in all the time.”

Flood gone, devastation remains

At the gates to the Tutaekuri River stopbank trail, a sign announces “Flood protection upgrades are happening here”.

It was too expensive to dig the silt from the quarter orchard that survived the flood, so it’s now been cleared. (File photo)

The dogs take no notice, pushing through to freedom. This is Katrina and John Harris’ second dog walk of the day.

The mountains of slash banked up against the Dockarys’ house have gone, but uncertainty remains.

The family of five lost their Esk Valley home and doggy farmstay and daycare in the Valentine’s Day deluge. Like most Eskdale residents, they were lucky not to also lose their lives.

A year on, they’ve switched from doggy daycare to Doggy Treks, and they’ve just moved into a rental for a year.

Their 14-year-old twins, Riley and Lachlan, have started at Napier Boys’ down the road, and 17-year-old Max is back home, after living for a year in a $30,000 caravan the Harrises bought and set up at his girlfriend’s.

With business interruption insurance, they’ve survived the year OK, and are building up the dog walking business to about 50 dogs a week. And insurance on the business finally came through before Christmas.

After a year from hell, Pete Marshall can still share a laugh with mates.

The couple originally hoped to re-establish the doggy daycare. But because the bank is treating the dog walking as an unproven new business, they can’t even get a mortgage to buy a new home.

“Last year was hard,” says Katrina. “I had a bit of a dark time there, but I’ve got through it. You have just got to accept what’s happened, and move on. We have had amazing support.”

When the Harrises moved in to their rental, Trudy Robinson brought round bacon and egg pies and donated furniture. A year on from the disaster, the retired 71-year-old volunteer is still ferrying donated beds, whiteware and lawnmowers and organising tradies. Others she visits because they’re on her welfare watchlist. She gets no funding, so is painting a house for a bit of income.

“People are really struggling,” Robinson says. “I think it will be another year before I can back off. Hastings and Napier have completely forgotten it. Yes, the flood is over, but the devastation is not.”

Out at Esk Valley, that devastation is hard to miss. While the Taupō traffic barrels along the shiny new road without a second glance, the silt-smothered landscape remains mostly grey and grim.

Mounds of dirt and trees and rubbish line the roadside. Skeletons of houses spew weeds through windows. A stoved-in white SUV sits in a paddock, driver’s door flung open.

At the Harris’ old place the split side of the house reveals an abandoned grater, sieve and weedeater.

The couple shared the land with Katrina’s sister and mother, who have gone their separate ways. Katrina’s sister is handling the buyout talks, so the Harrises have simply walked away.

Up the road from their broken home, Chris Baty is living in a world apart. His 1922 homestead was untouched by the flood, but was originally zoned category 3. The council didn’t take much convincing to re-zone it to liveable.

While the flood gutted the community, the few residents left have grown closer, Baty says. And up on this slight rise, with the flowers in bloom, you’d hardly know you’re living in a red zone.

“When it rains there's a bit of anxiety still. You wonder about the future. But this house has been here for 100 years, and probably will be for another 100. You just have to get on with life.”

But across the valley, it’s a very different story.

At Ian and Nicky Dockary’s former plum orchard, the carpet of trees and slash have gone. The one block of plum trees not mown down by the water and wood has now been cleared. They looked sick and weren’t worth saving.

Thirty years of work, extinguished.

The couple used their insurance money to buy a house in Napier.

“We’re pretty miserable really,” says Nicky. “We’re country people, so we’re not happy here.”

Because their property is bigger than 2 hectares, they only get a relocation offer. The valuers came last week to decide on a number.

“We’ve been told we’re lucky that we’ve got our land still, even though our land is wrecked. We don’t know anyone else who has had a relocation offer, so we really have no idea what the buyout will be.

“It’s hard to move on when you don’t know what’s happening. The closer it gets to the 14th of February, the harder it gets. To think we’ve spent a whole year, pissing around wondering what we’re doing.”

Please don’t ask about their finances – they’re so over talking about it. It’s hard. There are still tears.

News the council might charge homeowners demolition costs was the last straw. “They sure are doing their best to break us,” Nicky wrote on a Facebook group.

“It’s taking far too long. If we knew what the hell was going on that would give us hope, and we could make plans. But we don’t.

“It’s heartbreaking. It really is.”

Back at his Pakowhai shed, Marshall tucks into a sammie – marmite (for the vitamin B12), honey (to even it up), onion, cheese and avocado.

“It you’re going to sit in the grubby old dirt eating a sandwich, you might as well have something that’s got some flavour,” he reasons.

Mentally, he’s improving. He’s learning to let go of the stuff he can’t control.

“How long since I was real mad?” he asks his mate, Kev.

“About a fortnight ago, when you were having a shit round of golf,” Kev replies.

You’ve got to laugh.