Auckland floods: Mum of five tells of lucky escape from flooded home

A pregnant Auckland mum and her five kids were lucky to make it out alive as their West Auckland home was inundated with rapid-like floodwater on Friday night.

Shalina Jennings said she was with her five kids aged 16, 15, 14, 9 and 6 last Friday in her house on Clover Drive, Henderson, hiding out from the heavy rain on the couch with a movie on.

“All of a sudden the kids started running in saying ‘hey, you know the street’s flooding right?’” Jennings, who is five months pregnant, said.

Shalina Jennings, Rayden Peter aged 6 and Ratai Peter, were lucky to make it out alive as their West Auckland home was inundated with rapid-like floodwater on Friday night. Photo / Hayden Woodward

The water started to rise at a rapid pace, Jennings said, up her driveway.

By the time she knew it was time to evacuate and started packing bags, just minutes later, the water was already at her front door.

“It started pouring through the front door,” Jennings said.

“I just thought stuff it, I dropped the bags and we just all ran out.”

They couldn’t get through the front door, Jennings said, because at that stage the water in her driveway “was like a rapid”.

“If you walked through it, you would just get swept away.”

Looking across to her neighbours, the water turned one driveway into a whirlpool, making cars drift into fences and houses.

She knew the only way out was out the backdoor, which when opened, unleashed another river of water through their house and out the hallway. Her two youngest children were screaming in terror.

“We had to go out through the garage, by that time the water was at chest height,” Jennings said.

Taking a step down, the water was suddenly up her chest. Across the way, she saw a glimmer of hope on another street. Universal Drive, which had not yet flooded. She knew that’s where she needed to get her family too.

Springing into action, her oldest children waded in the water carrying her younger two, placing them on the fence while they jumped over, and repeated the process again and again until they were out of the high waters.

Being five months pregnant and having recently undergone knee surgery, Jennings herself couldn’t jump, she and her children helped rip open a hole in the fence so she could escape to safety.

“The neighbours saw us, and we started yelling at them to follow us, by that point you could see the neighbourhood was in shock.”

No emergency services could get to them, so Jennings and her family room it upon themselves to answer the urgent cries for help from their neighbours.

Shalina Jenning’s home on Clover Drive has been devastated after the Auckland floods. Photo / Hayden Woodward

Most of them were on Meadowcroft Way and saw them wading through the water to attempt to get to Universal Drive.

As Jennings started to direct people to safety, her 14-year-old son and his father were pulling children and the elderly out of their homes.

“My other son started driving cars up the road to keep them out of the water,” Jennings said

“We were putting elderly people in the cars and I was jumping in to make sure they weren’t wounded.”

They grabbed children, babies, grandparents and everyone in between and took them Universal Drive out of the rapidly rising flood waters.

“We had people watching us, people coming up to me screaming ‘what do I do, tell me what to do’”, she said.

“You can’t walk away from a screaming child or an old person yelling for help.”

Another resident with a jet ski started to help with the evacuation effort. This continued for about 45 minutes, Jennings said until the first of the emergency services arrived.

Shalina Jenning’s car is a complete write-off after the Auckland floods. Photo / Hayden Woodward

Eventually, her family escaped to a relative’s house for safety.

Returning to assess the damage the next day, she was devastated at the state the flood waters had left her house in.

“Everything inside the house is filled with mud and sewage, can’t even see the carpet anymore,” Jennings said.

“It came up so high it’s about halfway up the wall. Everything is damaged, nothing is salvageable.”

With only a couple of bags of clothes that were able to be washed, a few electronics and, thankfully, her important documents she had the forethought of moving to the high place, her family had been left with nothing.

Even her cars, parked out the front of her house, are complete write-offs. Their house is a write-off too, being deemed unsafe to live in.

Another resident of Clover Park, John Mailata had a similar scene at his house.

“Pretty much everything is tipped over, mattresses, draws, cupboards, everything is all wet,” Mailata said.

John Mailata’s home on Clover Drive has been devastated after the Auckland floods. Photo / Hayden Woodward

Mailata said on Friday evening he left to go get dinner for himself and the five other people who live in his home.

“The flood wasn’t that bad, it was only around my ankles,” he said.

“Within 45 minutes to an hour, I came back, and the water had risen a lot.”

He and the other members of his house quickly evacuated to his sister’s house. Returning the next day, they were devastated by what they found.

Sewage and mud cover the entire floor, everything is saturated, and nothing salvageable.

John Mailata’s home on Clover Drive has been deemed unsafe to live in due to the damage. Photo / Hayden Woodward

Now begins the massive cleanup for these two Clover Drive families, and for many other people around Auckland.

At least 30 homes across the region have now been red-stickered.

This number is only the tip of the iceberg, with more than 5000 properties across 25 suburbs needing some level of assessment. A hundred and thirty assessors are on the ground between Wellsford and Pukekohe.

Tomorrow will be a brief reprieve for Aucklanders to clean up, assess the damage and clear gutters and drains in preparation for another major weather event arriving on Tuesday and Wednesday, Metservice’s Georgina Griffiths said in an Auckland Emergency Management briefing.