‘We survived’: River’s flood level points to power of storm

Thursday, 22 January 2026

When Amake Landman arrived at the Ohinemuri River on the way to work in Paeroa on Thursday morning, she found a closed floodgate holding back a 50m wide brown torrent.

Unable to get to work at Woolworths Paeroa, the plan for the day was clear - head home and clean up damage from Wednesday night’s storm.

She was not alone as clean up began around the region which was battered by it’s usual quarterly rainfall dropping within a single torrential day.

First, many Paeroa residents swung by the flood control gates at SH26 where the road crosses the river.

The torrent heading out of the Karangahake Gorge toward the Firth of Thames was dirty, angry and just contained by the flood control gates that close the road and seal the river within its banks.

Amake said the wind was blowing up to 70kph at their farm, just outside Paeroa the night before..

“Being a stand alone house on a farm, there’s nothing to break the wind for you,” she said.

The wind blew things around the house and patio.

But she was resilient, despite the clean-up ahead.

“That’s alright. We survived.”

Landman was amazed the power stayed on.

“I thought we’d definitely lose it.”

Also taking a look was Chris ‘Chappy’ Landman, a lifelong Coromandel resident, who described the weather as “really bad”.

“I got up around midnight and it’s just like the full force was on. The rain was just sideways and windy as well,” he told the Waikato Times.

Glen van Hellemond said the river levels in Paeroa are the highest he’s ever seen it.

“It’s [the river] pretty high up back at home. I’ve never seen it like that before,” Van Hellemond said.

He briefly lost power for five minutes before it was quickly back on.

That was a “big thing” compared to the major outage when Cyclone Gabrielle hit, he said.