The death toll from Cyclone Gabrielle has reached nine people as emergency teams continue to search for missing people.
Video / Mark Mitchell / George Heard / Mike Scott
On Saturday morning, the sun came out. Not a cloud.
If this were the Saturday morning it was supposed to be, then our skies would have been lit up with the sights of historic planes joyfully dancing in the blue.
Instead, there’s just the whir of helicopters - lessthan there has been all week, sure - but they’re still present, buzzing, trying to help a region in disaster.
Today was supposed to be the day we truly returned to normality.
The Art Deco Festival that has become Napier’s biggest party was tossed and turned for three years by a pandemic, but it was to be back this year.
Art Deco Festival-goers would have been arriving ready to dance the night away. Photo / Jeff Brass
Tens of thousands of people were booked to come, to dance, to rejoice with us at a 1930s-themed bash that our biggest natural disaster helped to create.
Instead, there are still people waking without power again today.
The lights came on for some on Napier Hill and in the central city overnight. But for some Napier suburbs and part of Clive, they switched on and then, agonisingly, switched off again.
There’s clear hope now that electricity will return for many by Monday, but it’s by no means guaranteed.
Meanwhile, what remains of many livelihoods is now turning to dust. The tonnes of silt thrown over us like a blanket is drying and starting to smell.
Work in the Esk Valley on Friday evening. Photo / Paul Taylor
My team have requested masks for reporting, and you would think it will only get worse.
The full cost of this event - human and economic - is becoming clearer. It stands alone as a weather event in Hawke’s Bay now.
Recency bias is a thing and Cyclone Bola was catastrophic, but the enormity of what we are set to experience in cleaning up will exceed it.
All of our main economic pillars are shaken. Horticulture is destroyed. Forestry is cut off. Our tourism at the moment consists mostly of joyriders trying to have a rubberneck up the Esk Valley.
How do we prosper now?
An emotional Jerf van Beek and fellow orchardists stand before the destruction floodwaters brought to his apples. Photo / Hamish Bidwell
Napier Port is fine, but it’ll have few of our products to share with the world this year.
For the next little while, its main purpose will be as a place for ships (the Navy arrived on Friday) to drop off essential supplies. Sadly, there’s a temporary morgue that’s been set up too.
The work that everyone has put in just to get us to Saturday has been immense. Our emergency responders have been heroic, and our community organisations have stepped up to help those in need.
We’ve felt the love from New Zealand, too.
There’s a saying in Hawke’s Bay that we are an “island” - two hours by road from anywhere else, four to five hours away from any major city. We have our own economy, our own mannerisms, our own road code.
Times like this show us both how isolated, and how connected, we really are.
We will need Aotearoa’s help over the next week. A steady fuel supply and butane for gas cookers are the two things Napier and Wairoa need most at the moment.
Once the lights come back, we’ll take a deep breath and rebuild, maybe in new places.
Whatever we choose to do, we’ll do it with a trademark style and quality. Ninety years ago, we chose Art Deco. Perhaps we can do something equally transcendent.
In Esk Valley on Tuesday morning, a torrent of water washed away everything.
But not one of the houses in the valley went downstream with it. Our foundations are strong. It’s a ray of sunshine we can cling to.
