Rampaging floodwaters leave 'souvenirs'

When Isoline Theobald-Spice returned home to her flood-ravaged house yesterday morning, she discovered a motley collection of items washed up on her front porch - a toy dog, firewood and a tangelo.
They were souvenirs left by the floodwaters that gushed across her garden and throughout her Shelley St home on Wednesday, soaking the carpets with filthy water and rendering the house uninhabitable.
"It's not fun," sighed the 83-year-old as she surveyed the damage.
After an adventurous night, reality was beginning to sink in.
A council worker arrived during the downpour and carried Mrs Theobald-Spice out of the house to safety. She spent the night with other evacuees from the area at Hotel Armitage and returned to a dry bed there last night.
When the Bay of Plenty Times dropped in yesterday, Mrs Theobald-Spice was waiting for an insurance assessor to arrive - and gardening in her gumboots.
"To think I was watering my plants just the other day," she said with amazement, looking at the soaked earth and tide mark stretching half a metre high around her home.
"I don't need to now. You've got to look on the bright side."
Other homeowners in Shelley St were taking advantage of the sunshine, cleaning up the mess left behind by the flood waters. Mountains of sodden carpet and cardboard boxes lined the street.
Neighbours, friends and family members all mucked in. Some had travelled from Hamilton and Auckland to help with the clean up.
The scene was repeated all over Otumoetai, with numerous houses suffering from severe flood damage.
Gloria Sisson is worried her Ngatai Rd house will require major reconstruction.
Water swamped the whole property.
When she arrived home at 2pm on Wednesday, her cat Ninny was meowing loudly from the top shelf of Ms Sisson's wardrobe - the only dry spot in the house.
Fortunately, Ms Sisson's insurance cover provides motel accommodation until the house is liveable again.
"I can't stay here, it's too yuck," she said, looking around her home in despair.
A lot of the water that drenched Otumoetai causing the devastation emptied into the sea at an outlet on the corner of Bureta Rd and Harbour Drive.
Wastewater came roaring down the stormwater drain, ripping apart wire cages full of rocks and gouging out a river where a creek once was.
The force of the torrent carved out a course under the front veranda of Pat Street's waterfront home. The veranda's timber supports are now left dangling above Mrs Street's new canal.
The rush of water also damaged the bridge access across the drain to her home which serves as her driveway leaving it unsafe to cross.
Yesterday afternoon contractors were dumping huge rocks, weighing up to a tonne each, in the waterway to stabilise the bank in case of any more rain.