More than 1000 homes are without power around Hawke’s Bay this morning and the Tararua district is in a state of emergency as strong winds uprooted trees and heavy rain swelled streams and rivers.
Tararua Mayor Scott Gilmore said the council declared a state of emergency last night so “we could co-ordinate our response and support the community as the weather came through”.
The council reported this morning that “some self-evacuations have taken place in coastal areas” including the Herbertville Inn and Herbertville Campground.
The campground, beside the Wainui River, shared a post on social media that it had been a “long night”.
“Yes, the river did burst its banks and everyone got out safe.”
Campers were evacuated to the town hall, but the campground reported the cabins appeared to be fine on Monday morning.
Herbertville Inn publican John Sedcole evacuated to the town hall alongside his staff, neighbours, and the residents of the nearby campground.
Sedcole said the evacuation was a precaution because the Wainui River was about to “burst its banks in the campground so we shifted to the hall”.
He returned to the pub around 5.30am, just after high tide.
“The water level had dropped in the river and so had some of the surface water around the section,” he said.
“We’re without power but our generator we bought a short time ago is powering all our essential equipment.”
Sixteen schools in the district were closed, and there were power outages and trees down in the district. The state of emergency remained in place.
Just further north, Hawke’s Bay was also hit hard by high winds and rainfall on Sunday night and early Monday.
Powerline companies Unison (Hastings and Napier), Centralines (Central Hawke’s Bay), and Firstlight (Wairoa) were working hard to restore power to impacted communities - with over 1000 outages.
Most of the outages were in rural areas, including an outage affecting 637 properties in the Maraetotara, Kahuranaki, Waimarama and Ocean Beach area.
Other major outages included one affecting 361 properties in the Te Hauke and Otane area.
Several schools were closed in Hawke’s Bay today, including the likes of Patoka School and Argyll East School.
Hawke’s Bay Airport has been disrupted, with some flights cancelled in and out of the region on Monday morning.
Flaxmere also suffered surface flooding on some streets.
Meanwhile, Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery Mark Mitchell visited Wairoa on Sunday evening ahead of the wild weather.
Plenty of resources were dispatched to Wairoa in case of flooding.
Fortunately, there was no flooding to that township on Monday morning, and the Wairoa River mouth and another opening in the river bar (to the east of Pilot Hill) was flowing well.
That was a huge relief for the township, which has been impacted by serious floods in recent years.
Some homes were recommended to self-evacuate on Sunday along Kaiwaitau Rd between Mahia and Mahanga - ahead of the forecast rainfall - but, fortunately, those homes did not flood near the stream.
A strong wind warning (orange) was in place for Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne Tairāwhiti until 9am today.
There was also a heavy rain warning (orange) for Tararua and for some parts of Hawke’s Bay- such as south of Waipukurau and eastern Hawke’s Bay hills from Cape Kidnappers south - until 10am today, and 7am for Tararua.
The Napier-Taihape Rd was closed this morning because of the weather. All state highways in Hawke’s Bay were open.
Volunteer firefighter James Brett Harold lives in Wimbledon near Herbertville.
He saw the Wainui River and its feeder creeks were rising before he went to bed and, when his daughter woke him at 2am Monday, he went to check the creek near his property to see it was pretty close to coming up next to his house.
“I was quite surprised at how fast the creek and rivers came up because it was like clear, flowing clear and low even right up to [Sunday] afternoon,” he said.
Fortunately, it started to recede.
He went for a drive towards Herbertville only to find fallen trees blocking his way, so Harold returned home to grab a chainsaw and carved a path through the debris.
He arrived in Herbertville to find the campground had been evacuated to the hall.
When Hawke’s Bay Today spoke to Harold, he had just returned home after carving a path for local police and linesmen in another area.
“Now we’re just waiting on Centralines to come and restore the power,” he said.
Harold believed the clean up from the storm would be “nowhere near Gabrielle”.