87-year-old woman escapes flood waters by hiding in the top of her wardrobe

Monday, 20 April 2026

It wasn’t the rain that woke Zena on Monday morning, but her dog, Mash, jumping onto her bed.

“I thought he needed to go out,” she said. “But when I got up, there was water all over the floor.”

The house, where Zena has lived her whole life, is at the bottom of Emerson St in the Wellington suburb of Berhampore, where a blocked storm water drain had resulted in rapidly rising waters.

Zena’s first thought was her 87-year-old mother, sleeping in a bedroom down the hallway.

She waded out of her room. The water was rising, and she had to push hard to open her mother’s bedroom door.

The two women made their way back to Zena’s room. The water rose so rapidly they soon found themselves treading water.

“The whole house filled up so fast, I couldn't get doors open, the windows kind of got bogged up.”

Beside them, the bed floated, Mash the dog sitting on top, “nice and dry”.

In the corner of Zena’s room there is a built-in wardrobe, with a large gap at the top. Holding onto the side of the wardrobe, Zena helped her mum clamber into the space.

Floating alongside her mum in the chilly water, just an arm’s length from the ceiling now, Zena managed to call 111.

When the call didn’t work, she phoned her sister, Margaret Naftel in Johnsonville.

Margaret and husband Gavin jumped in the car, calling emergency services as they headed to Berhampore, arriving around 4.15am.

At the flooded street, Gavin Naftel and a police officer went round the back of the house.

The waters had receded a little, and they managed to force the back door open. They waded down the hallway in the dark, bumping into floating objects, and made their way to the two women.

“She was shaking away,” Gavin Naftel said of his mother-in-law. “It was pretty cold.”

The women went to a makeshift evacuation centre at the local BP, and Zena’s mum was taken to hospital. The pair will stay with the Naftels until the house is habitable again.

“That might be a while,” Gavin said.

By Monday afternoon, the water had receded, leaving a muddy tide mark along the wall, over two metres high.

Zena was sorting through the items in the wet rooms. She felt “tired and messy”.

The carpet was sodden, and sludge covered surfaces. Furniture had been picked up and moved by the floodwaters: a large cabinet tipped over, and a book case had floated into the garden, full of sodden books.

Outside, Naftel pointed out a wool sack full of sticks and weeds. Four sacks worth had been removed from the storm drain at the bottom of the street, he said.

“Nothing gets through that … the water came up quickly.”