After the floods: Councillor Richard Hills reflects on what Auckland learned
Sunday, 25 January 2026
Three years on from the Auckland Anniversary floods, the councillor for one of the city’s hardest-hit wards reflects on a night the city was overwhelmed, the aftermath, and what’s being done to ensure such a tragedy never happens again. As told to Amelia Wade.
It had been raining all day and it just wouldn’t stop. By late afternoon, children were boogie-boarding through floodwater in our parks.
I started getting messages from people trying to get to the scheduled Elton John concert, saying the motorways were flooding. It was clear things were becoming dangerous, but Auckland had never experienced anything like this before and no one was quite sure what to do. It was chaos.
The flood waters rose quickly in Wairau Valley - one of the worst hit areas in the city. Cars were swept away, buses were floating and soon after every fire truck in the city was responding. The photos being shared online were terrifying.
People had to scramble to their roofs of their homes to escape the water and in rest homes, residents had to be piggy-backed out or floated to safety in wheelie rubbish bins. Surf Lifesavers pulled 69 people out of the gushing waters.
When it got bad, it got really bad, very fast. My priority was getting people to safety and communicating as much as possible through social media. We scrambled and responders did the best they could, but we didn’t yet have the emergency management systems we have now.
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Tragically, four people were killed across Auckland, including two in the flash floods in Wairau.
The water disappeared almost as quickly as it rose. By morning it was gone, but the destruction remained.
It was all hands on deck. Everyone helped however we could - at leisure centres and marae that became shelters for people who had lost everything, at food banks, visiting families, and working alongside volunteers to clear the debris.
In some homes the water had risen above doorframes, destroying everything. The waste quickly became a sanitary hazard as people dumped the contents of their homes on the kerbside. We organised urgent collection - in Sunnynook and Milford alone, about 2,500 tonnes of rubbish was removed in just two days.
In response, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown ordered an urgent review, which has since become the roadmap for improving our resilience and emergency response - systems that are now second to none.
We now have full-time experts monitoring weather and waterways, and far more sophisticated systems. When heavy rain is forecast, councillors and the media receive alerts from Auckland’s command centre so warnings can be shared quickly. There’s a balance to strike - we don’t want to overshare and risk people tuning out.
Teams have increased the clearing of the stormwater network before rain events. We can’t inspect all 90,000 across Auckland - that would cost tens of millions - so the focus is on drains in flood plains, and high-risk areas.
Council is also investing in longer-term resilience through Mayor Brown’s Making Space for Water programme, a 10-year infrastructure and resilience programme.
That includes “blue-green” projects that give water more room to flow safely through neighbourhoods and reduce flood damage. One example is the redevelopment of Takapuna golf course into a multi-use recreational flood-storage wetland, capable of holding at least 600 million litres of water - helping reduce future flooding and potential loss of life and property.
Councillors wanted to do even more resilience projects, but we ended up having to buy out far more flood-risk properties than expected - around 1,200 in total.
When it rains heavily now, I still get messages from people worried it will happen again. The 2023 floods were unprecedented, but with climate change, extreme weather events will become more frequent and more severe.
There’s only so much infrastructure can do. We all need to understand the risks, be personally prepared, and have a plan - so the tragedy of those floods never happens again.
Richard Hills is the councillor for Auckland’s North Shore ward.