Twilight Coffee Garden regulars Frank Hicks, Jean McConnell, Livee Bowker and daughters Luna and Aurora. The coffee store reopened on Tuesday after the severe flooding that devastated the East Coast town last week.
Twilight Coffee Garden regulars Frank Hicks, Jean McConnell, Livee Bowker and daughters Luna and Aurora. The coffee store reopened on Tuesday after the severe flooding that devastated the East Coast town last week.
The owner of a Te Araroa coffee store feared she’d be unemployed after she and others were evacuated on Saturday because of landslide risks following the devastating storm.
But Maree Brownlie, owner of the Twilight Coffee Garden, was allowed back to her business and home by Monday morning, along withmost of the other residents evacuated from Te Araroa.
Tuesday was Brownlie’s first official day back at work, and she told Local Democracy Reporting it was “a lovely sunny day, supported by locals”.
She stayed with relatives during the evacuation and “did not sleep a wink”.
Brownlie said she only had a couple of hours to get organised after being notified at 5pm.
“I was quite stunned ... I walked into each room thinking ‘what do I need from here?’ And at the end of the day I didn’t really need that much personally.
“I felt for all the families with babies and children – getting them out in such a hurry.”
Brownlie said she was fortunate to have relatives in a safe place, but they had no power, internet or water, so she brought her generator and gas bottles, and they fired up the barbecue.
They used lots of battery-powered Christmas lights to see what they were doing.
“Everything was just so anxious and stressful and pretty negative, and just to sit there surrounded by fairy lights everywhere, it was surreal ... that was the one lovely thing I will remember of that evening.”
On the first morning [after the flooding] “when nobody could go anywhere”, everyone got to it.
“The guys just got into it, and I thought ‘right, I’m firing up the coffee machine ... I’ve got power’. A lot of people didn’t have power ...
“I jumped in the old [Toyota] Hilux and bashed it through the roads that the boys were starting to open up and took them coffees and snacks.
Fortunately, a lot of the people between Horoera (along East Cape Rd) and Hicks Bay worked in forestry and roading and could drive diggers or graders, she said.
“In each area that had been cut off, there was someone with those skills that could actually start doing something. Machines were borrowed and everyone just jumped on and got going.
“The mess was everywhere. You would look around, and you just did not know where to start.”
On her first day back at work on Tuesday, Brownlie thought she wouldn’t have many customers, but it was “great”.
“I guess people were hanging out for a good coffee.”
Her regular clientele are tourists or people passing through the area for work. But on Tuesday, locals wanted somewhere “peaceful and quiet ... to take their mind off everything else”.
Asked what the feeling was in the area, Brownlie said everyone was “in awe” of the amount of help from volunteers, organisations and government services.
“We’ve still got helicopters coming in regularly ... all the time. The bridge is now open over the back, so we’ve got all the trucks coming in now.
“We’ve been so well looked after ... everybody’s been so kind and so generous and so giving.”
Council roading teams are assessing and repairing damage to local roads following the severe weather.
The Gisborne District Council’s journeys operations manager, Libby Young, said in a statement that conditions remained challenging in parts of the district.
“There is significant damage in the Te Araroa and Hicks Bay areas, and access remains difficult in places.”
Council strategic communications and engagement manager Jade Lister-Baty said further property assessments were being conducted in Potaka, Rangitukia and East Cape Rd yesterday and today.
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
