New Zealand Red Cross advisor goes from 25 typhoons a year to a Napier flood

Red Cross communications advisor Heidi Anicete, on the ground in Napier. Photo / Paul Taylor

Wellington-based New Zealand Red Cross communications advisor Heidi Anicete was right in her element in Napier for the flood response.

She's from the Philippines, where she's used to the tempests of nature – at a rate of about 25 typhoons a year.

Even during her few days in Hawke's Bay before the four-day State of Emergency was lifted on Friday night, she was checking on family in Manila where Typhoon Vamco, also known as Ulysses, which formed on November 8 is reported to be still active. Parts of Manila remain "submerged", she said.

The 22nd named storm of the Pacific typhoon season, it had killed 67 people, with at least 12 more missing. It's the biggest in the area since 2009 when two typhoons killed more than 1400 people and caused over $10 billion in damage.

Just a week earlier, the region had been through Typhoon Goni, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Rolly, which became the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone on record by 1-minute winds, peaking at 315km/h.

Her parents, she was pleased to report, were not among them, and had, again, escaped the ravages of a storm which brought winds averaging 155km/h (96 miles) and gusts of up to 255km/h.

The week's deluge in Napier peaked with more than 230mm of rain in the CBD. Photo File

But it wasn't the storms that sent her packing for downunder – she arrived with her husband about two years ago when he took up a job in IT, and was a sure-thing for a permanent job sooner or later when she started volunteering for Red Cross in Auckland – her experience with the storms, including five years in relief organisations in the Phillipines, and a degree in communications as well.

She said one thing that had impressed her from the moment she joined teams in Napier last week was the way neighbours had joined forces to help each other out.

She was stood down and returned to Wellington as the State of Emergency was being lifted, but was still keeping in touch with one case in Napier, where a woman with two children and just six days in a new home had her access blocked by a slip in the driveway.

She said it was at least 1.5km by foot to the nearest supermarket and the moment Red Cross was able to help was one of the memories she has of the few days after the flood in Napier.