Little River Café faces months of closure: ‘It’s a complete wipe-out’
Monday, 23 February 2026
The local state of emergency for Banks Peninsula has been lifted, as communities still reel from the impact of last week’s devastating floods.
But property owners could yet be barred from entering buildings as teams from the Christchurch City Council now assess whether they are safe to go back into.
Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger lifted the state of emergency at 12.30pm on Monday. This signalled the area, parts of which had sustained extensive damage from flooding and slips during last week’s extreme rainfall, was now entering the recovery period, he said.
The Little River Café was one of a number of Banks Peninsula businesses still grappling with the aftermath. Owner Cameron Gordon said they had just found out the damage was much worse than initially thought.
Insurance assessors had told them a “complete rebuild” of the interior was going to be needed.
“All the walls are being taken down, all the shelving's being thrown away, all our benches and coffee benches, everything's being pulled out and thrown away and redesigned and rebuilt. We are closing down for probably two months, I'd imagine.”
The café was just one of six different insurance claims Gordon had on the go at the moment. “My house, my rental property, the restaurant, the café and my car. It's a complete wipe-out.”
He said luckily his little restaurant just down the road, called The One Next Door, had fared better.
“We’ve kind of opened that up a bit more and we're trying to take a bit of the loss of trading from the café down to The One Next Door,” he said. “[But it] hasn’t got the capacity that the café does, so we're definitely going to lose out a lot on that.”
It wasn’t just himself Gordon was concerned for, but his staff and the wider Little River community.
“There's, six, seven families that have lost or [are] potentially losing a lot of income out of this. That's why we’re rushing to get ourselves open again, because we're quite an essential service out here now.
“People need their general store. They need the café, that little hub, which is why we push so hard to get open and then just move down the road to the restaurant as an alternative for now.”
Mauger earlier thanked the wider Banks Peninsula community for the example they had set during the week.
“The patience and hard work of residents and the teams working on the response. You’re a credit to our district.
“Now that we’re in the recovery period, we’ll be focusing on supporting the community, repairing damaged water and roading infrastructure around the district, while keeping a close eye on land conditions.”
The council had made a special designation on Banks Peninsula under the Building Act, to make it easier to help keep people and property safe over the long-term even though the state of emergency had been lifted.
A special designation meant the council could perform rapid assessments on buildings believed to be damaged, and issue a coloured notice. A red placard meant a building was considered unsafe, and must not be entered or occupied.
A yellow placard meant access to the building was restricted, while a white placard meant a building could be occupied – although was not necessarily free of damage.
Several roads remained fully closed as of Monday, the council said, including:
Kaituna Valley Road, from Parkinsons Road to the end
Bachelors Road
Kinloch Road, from Okuti Valley Road to Bossu Road
Reynolds Valley Road, from Okuti Valley Road to Bossu Road
Western Valley (Port Levy), from about 2.8km up to the saddle
Peraki Road, from Bossu Road to the bottom
Bossu Road, from Wainui Main Road to Lands End
Donovans Road
Jubilee Road, from Wainui Main Road to Bossu Road
Wainui Main Road to Bossu Road
Wainui Valley Road
Others – including parts of Waitaturi Ln, Lighthouse Rd, Goughs Bay Rd, Hickory Bay Rd, Long Bay Rd, Parkinsons Rd, Prices Valley, Montgomery Park, and Western Valley – were open but still had some damage or flooding, and motorists were urged to take care.