Napier music shop facing massive rain-damage bill

"2020 go away" Music Machine proprietor Richard Jarman addresses the latest calamity after flooding from through the roof hit at least $60,000 worth of stock in Napier. Photo / Doug Laing

Napier music store proprietor and musician Richard Jackman is facing possibly $60,000 in stock-rain damage, but thanking his lucky stars it wasn't worse.

"It is what it is," he said, looking at the rows of Fender, Martin, Gibson and other fame-named guitars, and four amps retailing at up to $3000 each, all affected by water which came through the ceiling of the century-old Harston's Building in Hastings St, about 200 metres from the bottom of the uphill Shakepeare Rd access to Bluff Hill.

"No one's got hurt," he said, repeating the common consoling response from most in business around around the CBD where the heaviest rainfall was recorded – 237 millimetres in 12 hours on Monday, nearing a third of the average annual rainfall. "2020 go away," he said.

Jackman, from Liverpool and with 28 years in the music industry in Napier behind him - including nine in the historic building - said the heavy rain had started before he left work for the day.

He thought about returning later, but said: "We wouldn't have got back. It wasn't worth it."

Returning in the morning, with a landlord representative already on-site, he was able to see the whole impact, water having come through the roof and ceiling at the front of the shop before spilling over the electrical items and guitars hanging on the walls.

Being 2020, coronavirus and all, some of the guitars – some American and the others mainly made in Asia – have been difficult to get, but now it will be up to insurers to decide what next.

"You can't sell them as new," Jackman said, although the shop was open again, most of its huge array of stock unharmed.

Another of the many CBD businesses cleaning-up after the flood – but like most feeling lucky to have escaped with little more than the need to call in the man with the drying gear – was pharmacist Peter Bailey, a stalwart with 40 years in business in Emerson St.

Water had come through the ceiling in six places as internal guttering was unable to handle the torrent, but he was thankful for a moment of premonition when the business relocated to the shop from elsewhere in Emerson St more than 20 years ago.

Remodelling the premises, the floor level at the entrance was raised ever so slightly with tiles.

"If that hadn't been done, we would have been in trouble," he said, with dryers whirring in the background but the shop open for business as usual.

"When I left, water was gushing up from the pavement, not down," he said. "Dalton St (about 200 metres away) was just a river."

"That's the worst we've ever had," he said, remembering another heavy downpour in the years before the 1990s redevelopment of Emerson St, which turned it from a standard two-lane main-street thoroughfare with deep gutters into the current shopping pedestrian shopping precinct.