“We were looking at that window to get out, but it was too high, too fast, too swift,” he said, pointing to a window in his house.
“We waited until it went down because it was too dangerous to get out. If we got out, we would have got swept away.”
They lost two caravans in the flood but found the shipping container lodged in a tree about 500 metres away.
Ms Whaitiri said the caravan contained everything she owned.
“My clothes, my bits and pieces, everything,” she said.
Despite her loss, Ms Whaitiri was thankful.
At 5.40am on Sunday she was on her way to work at Te Puia Springs Hospital. By 8am her caravan was gone.
“Had I been asleep in my caravan, I probably would have been out to Chile or something, or down in the deep blue sea,” Ms Whaitiri said.
From here, it was just “pick up and carry on”, she said.
“I’m lucky, I’ve got a job. A lot of friends have given me clothes. I’m staying at a mate’s place for a while. It’s all good.”
Mr Whaitiri said he knew something was wrong when he woke up on Sunday and couldn’t see water flowing in the creek behind his house.
It had been raining heavily since about 7pm the night before and that meant the creek should have been full.
After warning his partner that they might have a problem, Mr Whaitiri heard a gurgling noise and realised water had surrounded his house.
Another resident, Megan Williams, said she was emotional.
“I want to scream, I want to cry,” she said.
She and her whanau thought the rain would never stop.
Chickens and a cat were perched on her trampoline trying to escape the water.
She motioned her hands to show the struggle of two guinea pigs furiously paddling to keep their heads above water. Her whanau managed to save all the animals.
They evacuated on Sunday and went to sleep at her mother’s house.
They couldn’t use the toilets or showers at their own whare, she said.
Mrs Williams lives down the road from the township’s transfer station, which is perched precariously on the bank of the Mangahauini River.
Rubbish is strewn around the transfer station. Its walls look like they’ve burst at the seams and river debris hangs on the fences.
When The Gisborne Herald visited on Monday, the sun was shining, the sea near calm and Tokomaru Bay community members were out on the streets with shovels in hand.
Tamariki and kuia worked side by side shovelling silt left by the storm. Chainsaws whirred as trees were cut and moved, carpets were stripped from homes and driveways cleared of thick mud.
There were still some jokes to be made, laughs about a beer fridge being swept away and a tired “ka pai” uttered with a smile.
There were kind words spoken of MP Kiritapu Allan, who had been out in their rohe, assessing the storm’s damage despite being on leave as she battles stage 3 cervical cancer.
Gisborne District Council said the full extent of the damage caused by the weekend’s heavy rains was not yet known.
Up to 200 millimetres of rain was recorded north of Ruatoria as rivers reached capacity and surface flooding threatened houses and businesses along the East Coast.
Tokomaru Bay was one of the worst affected areas, with severe flooding in some parts.
The council reported that four homes were flooded and families were forced to self-evacuate, however, no other evacuations were necessary.
School children had collected rubbish from the beach, Hatea a Rangi School principal Karla Kohatu said.
The kura was closed yesterday as a team of teachers, staff and volunteers cleared the mess left behind by a torrent of water that washed through their classrooms and administration block.
“Diabolical,” Mrs Kohatu said.
Only one classroom of three had not been affected.
“I’m just really overwhelmed by the kindness of our whanau to come and help clean up today,” she said.
When they were able to set up a hub at one end of the kura, they would start distance learning for tamariki, she said.
“Today and yesterday was definitely a day to tidy up your own backyard and strengthen your own whanau place first.”
Tamariki were at home enjoying squelching their feet through the mud.
“Chocolate milk,” yelled one boy as he stomped in the mud.
