Evacuations in Akaroa as slip threatens homes
Thursday, 1 May 2025
Local states of emergency are in place across Christchurch, Banks Peninsula and Selwyn as rain pummels the region forcing evacuations with Fire and Emergency responding to multiple calls for help including the rescue of a woman and two children trapped on a bridge.
Christchurch’s stormwater basins are also at or near full capacity bringing an increased risk of flooding for properties around the upper Heathcote River.
The city council’s Head of Three Waters Gavin Hutchinson warned the basins were beginning to overflow and some properties could be affected. High tide was at 7.40pm.
“We’re actively monitoring the water levels in the Heathcote River and will do our best to limit any impacts on residents overnight,” said Hutchinson.
The warning came less than three hours after a state of emergency was declared for Christchurch and Banks Peninsula as rain continued to fall across the region and Selwyn District.
The resulting floodwaters have closed roads, forced evacuations and seen many schools shut for the day.
Three homes were evacuated in Akaroa due to cracks in Lighthouse Rd. Fire and Emergency crews advised people to leave and the council was waiting on a geotech assessment.
Fire and Emergency had received 61 calls for help across the Canterbury region by 7.30pm, including rescuing a woman and two children trapped on a bridge surrounded by floodwaters about 11.35am, a spokesperson said.
A state of emergency was declared for the Selwyn District before 6am.
The most recent road closure is Dyers Pass Rd from the Sign of the Takahe to Governors Bay due to a slip. A full list of road closures can be found online on the NZTA website here, and for Christchurch City Council roads here.
Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger said the local state of emergency was needed due to the impact of flooding, slips, landslide and falling trees, particularly on Banks Peninsula.
“We need to make sure we’re able to keep people safe by putting all of our resources into responding to any problems that arise and one of the best ways we can do this is by declaring a local state of emergency.
“We expected the weather would ease, which hasn’t happened, so declaring will mean we are prepared for anything that may happen overnight.
“The decision to include Christchurch was made as precautionary measure. High tide is expected at 7.41pm so declaring means we would have access to powers under the State of Emergency if they’re required.”
Torrential rain has drenched the region and parts of the wider South Island, forcing the declaration of a state of emergency in Selwyn early on Tuesday morning.
Roads and schools were closed across Canterbury due to flooding or fallen trees (a list of road closures is at the bottom of this story).
More than 80mm of rain fell at Christchurch Airport in the 24 hours to 9am on Thursday, which is half as much again as is normally recorded for the whole of May, making it the fourth wettest such period since records began in 1943.
Speaking in Rolleston at 4pm, Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell said local councils and emergency workers on the ground had done an “outstanding” job.
Mitchell said that while the situation was still developing, rain should begin to ease on Thursday evening and the recovery stage was already under way.
MetService meteorologist Brian Mercer said Canterbury’s heavy rain warning had lifted after 8pm.
“We have seen the rain stop there, there’s a few showers that are left behind but no significant heavy falls left.”
Those showers would continue through to the morning, and probably the early afternoon.
“The entire system is gradually tracking north east,” Mercer said. There was still heavy rain on Wellington, which should turn to showers by noon.
Little River hit hard
Little River in Banks Peninsula was among the areas hit badly, with State Highway 75 at the nearby Lake Forsyth utterly swamped.
Little River’s SiloStay hotel owner Rob Fowler said some of his guests were unable to leave the town as the main street was completely flooded.
Although he knew rain was coming, Fowler had no idea it would be so intense until the local cafe called him about trapped people who needed a place to stay.
“That’s how you know it’s bad,” he said. “They’re safely tucked into our silo with the water lapping up to the carpark.”
Fowler has lived in Little River since 2010 and said this was the third “500-year storm” he had experienced.
“I’m not likely to get any walk-ins today, except the ones that can’t get off the peninsula.”
Banks Peninsula MP Vanessa Weenink said flooding was not uncommon on the peninsula, but this time all the key roads were blocked.
“Essentially, the peninsula is cut off - people can’t get in or out of any of the routes, all the evacuation routes are closed,” she said.
Weenink earlier shared a video of Little River turning into “Big River” - with its main street all but submerged in flowing, muddy water.
But she was not too concerned for the peninsula's “very resilient” and “self-reliant” residents, who had been through various disasters before.
Floodwaters lapping at floorboards
The Selwyn towns of Leeston, Southbridge, Doyleston and the Lower Selwyn Huts were amongst the worst affected.
“The water is rising really fast, which is a scary thing,” Leeston woman Larisha Toomey said just before midday, standing almost knee deep in muddy water as floodwaters rose around her home.
As heavy rain lashed Canterbury, Leeston woman Larisha Toomey was braced for the worst as floodwaters rose, the dirty water almost lapping at the floorboards.
Her partner, Chad Romano, spent about five hours working until midnight on Wednesday to clear surrounding culverts with a council worker in preparation for the downpour.
“If we hadn't done that, we probably would have woken up to this, whereas at 7am this morning, when I actually left for work, we only had a big fresh water puddle out here,” Toomey said. “But just in the [last] hour it's all going crazy. All the water’s … expanding out.”
In the seven years she has lived at the rural property on the corner of Leeston and Mounces roads, water has never reached her granny flat. But now water has submerged its deck.
“We had [flooding] about a year and a half ago, similar, but this is worse. The water is rising definitely faster.”
Neighbours and friends had been amazing, she said, helping look after her children aged 11 and 2.
Dozens of cars remained at homes at the Lower Selwyn Huts just early on Thursday afternoon, as the Selwyn River rose just metres away behind a stop bank.
Sandbags were piled at the open wing of a boat ramp to keep the river at bay, but it was centimetres from breaching the barrier.
Some Lower Selwyn Huts residents had evacuated, with one woman who had held off eventually leaving the area through Upper Selwyn Huts due to the threat of the river.
At Upper Selwyn Huts, many residents were walking about the village, waiting out the weather. Their village was also nestled behind the stopbank, which appeared about two metres from bursting.
Keith Morrison told RNZ people were knocking on doors telling residents to evacuate as he left his Upper Selwyn Huts home Thursday morning, and the ponding around his property was “as bad as it gets”.
He said it might help those people in the community who were in denial about climate change realise it was real, he said.
At Upper Selwyn Huts Danni Hodges was happily resting in the warmth of her home with her neighbour’s 20-year-old cat Vino.
She evacuated during the 2021 floods, and while there was a voluntary evacuation under way on Thursday, she was waiting for the stopbank to break before she would leave.
“I went into full panic mode when I got up at 8am this morning, but my friend rang me from around the corner and said, ‘Don’t, it’s not as bad as some other years’,” she said.
That friend was Leigh Rossiter, who was happy and warm with her husband, Chris Rossiter.
He was watching the water flow through ECan’s website and said he felt there was no cause for concern at all.
He said if the river got too high it would spill over the stopbank higher up the road and flow over the paddocks, missing the village.
“A lot of why they evacuate us is because we can’t get in or out if that happens, But if we run out of power, we’ve got two generators, we’re self-sufficient.”
Selwyn councillor Shane Epiha urged people to drive slowly through Leeston as vehicles were pushing water on flooded roads into people’s properties, including the home of an elderly woman.
Selwyn’s Malvern ward councillor Lydia Gliddon said the community was doing fine so far compared to the 2021 flood that ripped through the area and left a man needing to be freed from a tree.
Selwyn District Council distributed 250 sandbags to houses in West Melton, Doyleston and Leeston, and has sandbags available for residents at the Glentunnel Community Centre and the Sheffield Community Hall.
Schools closed and wastewater networks under strain
Ellesmere College in Leeston was closed because of “severe surface flooding on the school campus”. Darfield and Lincoln high schools were also shut, as was Southbridge School, due to flooding and rising water levels.
In Christchurch, the wastewater network was suffering as rain and floodwater inundated the system.
The city council warned some toilets, showers and sinks might empty slowly or, in the worst cases, not at all. It would arrange clean-up for any overflows onto properties.
Hillmorton High School and Te Aratai College were closed, the latter for for years 9-13. Te Aratai principal Maria Lemalie said the flooded school field made the English department inaccessible.
“Students would have to wade through the flooded field to access it … we can't expect staff and students to go through and drudge mud across campus,” she said. Year 7 and 8 classes remained open while students unable to go home were studying in the library, she said.
The fire service responded to nine weather events overnight in Canterbury including water entering homes in Akaroa, Leeston and Hinds, and leaky roofs in the New Brighton area, as well as a roof starting to lift in Westport, which was made safe.
Crews helped someone who became trapped in a caravan by rising water in the north Christchurch suburb of Ouruhia, Littlejohn said.
About 450 homes were earlier without power near Lincoln after a tree fell on powerlines, according to Orion, but it was later restored.
State of emergency declared, resident says earlier action needed
Selwyn mayor Sam Broughton said due to rising river levels and advice from the Environment Canterbury (ECan) flood controller, he declared a state of emergency for the district at 5.39am.
Residents were asked to evacuate from the Upper Selwyn Huts due to concerns of flooding from the Selwyn River, Broughton said. Coes Ford and other fords across Selwyn were closed.
Farmer Tim Sanson criticised ECan for not acting earlier to open up Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora, which neighbours his property near Fisherman's point.
He said the council sent two bulldozers on Thursday morning to open a sandbar separating the lake from the ocean, which would have allowed the lake waters to flow out instead of getting backed up and flooding people’s homes.
But they were unsuccessful, he said, because of all the flooding that had happened by the time they got there.
“They should have opened the lake while the weather was calm. Now you've got a lake 2m higher than it should have been,” he said. ECan has been approached for comment.
Birdlings Flat resident Jan Daffin said two diggers arrived to open up the lake, but due to strong southerlies and 2m swells, the diggers are not opening up the lake currently.
Daffin drove to the Boat club to retrieve kayaks, and said the gravel driveway to enter is now completely flooded, and the fence surrounding it is slowly coming away.
The resident of 13 years said she’s never seen the river this high, and is worried for people in Little River the most, as the shingles that Birdlings Flat is situated on is draining the water.
In response to claims the lake should have been opened earlier, ECan said action can only take place after a joint decision is made with Ngāi Tahu, governed by the National Water Conservation Order and suite of Resource Consents.
Consultation for a lake opening started on Monday and a joint decision was made to open it late Tuesday afternoon.
“The sea is currently too large to attempt an opening – it would not be successful [because] the cut from the lake to the sea would fill in and it is also unsafe for machinery to work in the surf zone,” said Leigh Griffiths, ECan’s general manager hazards.
“Machinery is on site [at Lake Ellesmere] and has put up a bund to stop wave over wash pushing shingle into the lake, which should make earthworks faster when an opening attempt can be made safely.
“We are watching conditions closely and the lake will be opened to the sea as soon as weather and sea conditions allow. This is likely several days away at the earliest.”
The council’s civil defence advised anyone with concerns to call 0800 SELWYN (735 996) but if a home was flooding or there was an emergency, residents should call 111.
Senior doctors striking on Thursday called off the picket in Christchurch due to the weather.
Further north, the Tasman district had taken “a pounding” with slips, and flooding closing roads, Littlejohn said.
Large swells and strong winds have cancelled ferries across the Cook Strait. Interislander cancelled its ferry crossings until Friday afternoon.
In Wellington, MetService has escalated its wind warning to red, predicting damaging gusts of 140 kmh peaking Thursday afternoon.
Dozens of flights were cancelled in and out of Wellington Airport, including the majority of Air New Zealand services through to midday. Selwyn MP Nicola Grigg was among those unable to travel to the capital due to the weather.
Drivers were urged to be aware of difficult road conditions, with MetService warning of surface flooding from Timaru to Kaikōura. All rivers and streams were likely to be affected with the most significant flows expected in the foothills.
An orange heavy rain warning remained in place for Canterbury until Thursday evening.
Snow blankets alpine areas
Snow blanketed parts of the Mackenzie District overnight including in Tekapo.
Mt Hutt received its first dump of the season with 80cm of snow. Mt Hutt skifield reported on its website the avalanche hazard was high, so access should not be attempted until they’d cleared the road and done snow safety checks.
MetService said snow could fall on the Arthurs, Lindis, Porters and Lewis passes.
Wind gusts greater than 100kph were buffeting the Kaikōura Coast.
Littlejohn said people should stay indoors and avoid travel unless it was necessary.
Federated Farmers Mid Canterbury representative David Acland said many farms in the area had surface flooding but there was no infrastructure damage or stock loss.