Flashbacks and feeling anxious: Hawke’s Bay flooding will re-traumatise locals - psychologist

Flooding in Black Street, Wairoa last week. Photo: RNZ / Calvin Samuel

By Pretoria Gordon, RNZ

People will be re-traumatised by flooding in Hawke’s Bay a year after Cyclone Gabrielle hit the region, a psychologist says.

Nearly 500 homes were damaged by floodwaters, with more than 100 rendered uninhabitable, after heavy rain in the East Coast last week.

A state of emergency was declared in Haumoana, the Heretaunga Ward in Hastings District, and Wairoa.

Psychologist Amber Logan said there were a number of people with post-traumatic stress disorder after Cyclone Gabrielle who would be triggered by East Coast floods.

“They’ll be struggling, they’ll be re-experiencing, they’ll be having flashbacks, they’ll be feeling anxious, [have] trouble sleeping, [be] feeling irritable - those kinds of things,” she said.

“When you have a large and essentially uncontrollable event like this, it really is the worst kind of trigger that you can have.”

Logan said the memory of Cyclone Gabrielle was still raw.

Last year, her own place in Haumoana flooded during the cyclone. She was without power for some time, and a year on, in February, she said she was still cleaning up the property.

Last week, Logan said she had experienced some flooding, but “it wasn’t anywhere near as bad”.

She said those who were evacuated would have been faced with two or three police officers banging on their door at 3am and would have had less than an hour to leave.

“Things like that are very confronting for people and difficult to get through,” she said.

She encouraged anyone struggling to take advantage of the free counselling still available in Hawke’s Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle, “if they are having flashbacks, waking up in the middle of the night or not being able to get to sleep, if they’re finding they’re feeling angry, anxious, constantly worried, or feeling numb or not able to feel happy”.

It was important “not to keep trying to suppress those feelings”, she said.

“There is a natural tendency for people to stuff all those feelings back down deep inside, so they don’t feel them, but that can actually make it worse.”

Mental Health

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