Tūtaekurī River stopbanks weakened in Cyclone Gabrielle onslaught

The Ngaruroro was the second-worst-affected river, with about 4km of stopbanks weakened, Hawke's Bay Regional Council says. Photo / Dawson Bliss

By RNZ

New figures show 16 kilometres of stopbanks on either side of one of Hawke’s Bay’s main rivers have been weakened by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Read the full report (PDF 3.3MB).

The damage on the Tūtaekurī River is the most extensive of the nine rivers and water courses assessed.

A Hawke’s Bay Regional Council update from earlier this month showed 25km in total weakened, and about 5.3km breached.

The Ngaruroro was second-worse-off, with about 4km weakened.

But it has only half a kilometre breached, versus about 3km of the Tūtaekurī, which flows along the edge of Napier’s Taradale suburb.

Emergency work has been completed on flood protection, and now repairs costing tens of millions of dollars have begun.

Detailed drone inspections have been carried out to plan for urgent repairs at critical areas.

The council said it had high confidence in the breach assessment and moderate confidence in the weakened assessment, arrived at using drone photos and videos as well as other forms of checking.

“We are working as fast as we can to repair stopbanks,” it said in its update.

It also showed rainfall from 6am Monday to midnight Tuesday during the cyclone was double what was predicted at certain monitoring spots on the Esk River (the highest at Glengarry - 258 millimetres in total), and almost double that predicted in the next three wettest spots, Tukituki (at Waipoapoa, 216mm), Wairoa (at Fairview, 213mm), and the Ngaruroro and Tūtaekurī Rivers (186mm).