CHB storm leaves harsh legacy

Rose Harding The thunderstorm and downpour which wreaked havoc in Napier more than a week ago did even more damage in rural Central Hawke's Bay.
Moteo Road farmer David Humphries hasn't even started on the clean-up around the woolshed and yards of his farm, Glen Moraig.
He and his wife Jan are too busy repairing hundreds of metres of fences washed out by the cloudburst on the morning of October 18.
Son Mark is busy with stock work, keeping heifers and bulls apart and the ewes and lambs in the right mobs.
Mr Humphries said that at 7.30am that Monday he emptied 38mm out of his rain gauge from the previous 24 hours.
Five hours later he emptied out an almost unbelievable 212mm more.
Soon after that the sun was shining and the flood waters gone - except, that is, for the trail of devastation left behind.
"On Tuesday I was wandering around in circles, just numb with the shock of it all."
Neither he nor his 81-year-old father, John, had ever seen anything like it.
Farm worker Leroy Bishop had begun work for Mr Humphries just a week earlier and was living in a cottage on the farm. Mr Humphries found him sitting in the laundry tub with his possessions swirling around him, including his clothes, which he had put on his air bed.
Mr Bishop's uninsured car, borrowed from his father, was under water. So was most of the cottage, which will take several months to make liveable again.
"I have had to strip the walls so it can dry out before relining them."
The water had come to just below the level of the windows. Mr Bishop stayed with the family for a week, helping out with the initial cleaning up, before he returned to Hastings.
"I couldn't afford to rent him a house in town and pay his travel all the way out here," Mr Humphries said.
"Not with at least $100,000 of damage and losses."
He said fence strainers and angles which had been in the ground for 30 years were "just blown out" by the force of the water, as were culverts he had replaced after February's rain.
He lost big lambs and ewes but was in the middle of lambing 600 hoggets. Everything born in the rain was washed away, he said.
"I won't know what I've lost until we can get everything in and check."
That might not be for a while because of the damage around the woolshed and yards.
His new quadbike was submerged but he had managed to retrieve and repair it.
A new sheephandler, generators, a waterblaster and yard fences were washed away.
His dog kennels were wrecked, and at the height of the storm he had to rescue his sheep dogs. He got to three pups just in time. One was swept away but washed up against a fence where he was able to save it. They have been living in the woolshed since.
Insurance would cover much of the loss but wouldn't replace the time repairs were taking, he said.
Mr Humphries said his task had not been helped by Meridian Energy.
He rang them to say that because of the flood and damage to his farm and the road into town he would be late paying his power bills. They told him each overdue bill would cost him another $15.
"I didn't need that."
However, other people had been helpful. Son Mark, 25, got some friends out from Waipukurau for a working bee, pulling rubbish off fences.
"They are a good bunch."