Country’s only lime juicing operation devastated in Wairoa flooding: ‘It’s just vanished’

The Limery in Wairoa was devastated by flooding. Photo / Di Downey

By RNZ

The owner of New Zealand’s only lime juicing operation is unsure how she will carry on after the company was devastated by floodwaters.

The Limery in Wairoa was inundated when the river burst its banks amid torrential downpours.

Owner Di Downey said machinery, vehicles, the processing plant and packhouse were all submerged.

“Forty-foot containers have been uplifted and moved,” she told Checkpoint.

“We’ve got logs and debris every which where.”

Downey had just minutes to escape the property after one of her staff members told her she had water coming up the stairs

“By the time we managed to get to the door it was a metre high,” she said.

“We managed to get one vehicle started and dodge logs as we [went] blindly in the dark.”

Downey raced up the hill to a neighbour’s property, but had to abandon the vehicle due to damage, she said.

The water was coming so fast “we just had to run”.

She could hear alarms going off at neighbouring properties, and pallets being picked up by the floodwaters and “strewn up in the trees”, she said.

The flooding was a heavy blow after losing her husband - who was also her business partner - two months ago.

Buildings, machinery and vehicles were all inundated. Photo / Di Downey

It had taken the couple 15 years to build their business “and now it’s just vanished”.

Neighbour Paul Macalo said Downey’s property would not have been so badly damaged if the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council had opened the river bar into the sea to divert the rising water.

He was helping Downey clear debris from her property on Thursday when he saw Wairoa mayor Craig Little and Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell turn up for a media conference.

“When I saw Craig, I’m afraid I lost my cool a wee bit because I’m so angry with the regional council not doing anything and then they put up all this stuff about how they couldn’t do it and their hydrologist - well to hell with their hydrologist. They need somebody with local knowledge,” he said.

“And the most annoying part is, for the last six months, until our paper [the Wairoa Star] closed, every now and again you’d see it in the paper; ‘We understand your problems, Wairoa, this is the regional council, we understand your problems, we know the [river] bar is the problem’ but they don’t do anything about it.

“Knowing and doing something about it are two different things.”

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council earlier told RNZ there was no doubt Wairoa would have flooded less if a channel to let the rising river release into the sea was dug sooner.

Council chairwoman Hinewai Ormsby told Nine to Noon decisions about opening the Wairoa bar were made on the best information available at the time.

“The difficulty and the challenge, which has been longstanding, for the management of the Wairoa mouth opening has been the level in which the riverbed is at versus the swell and tide, and the timings and complexities around getting that right for the sake of human safety ... as well as it being successful to actually open it.

“To move one bucket of shingle and have it fill up with two just minutes later will not be a successful opening,” she said.

“But acknowledging that we do all agree that had it been opened sooner we wouldn’t have seen the devastation that we have in Wairoa.”

Ormsby said the council would review its processes to see if the decision should have been made sooner.

Mitchell told Checkpoint he had heard the “serious legitimate concerns” about the river bar.

“I’ve spoken with the mayor, the deputy mayor. I’ve been in the community and this is consistent feedback and it’s definitely something that is going to have to be addressed,” he said.

The response to the flooding had been “outstanding”, he said.

“The mayor put them into an early local state of emergency, their civil defence team and council team were outstanding, they were supported very quickly by Fenz, police, St John and other first responders. But the actual response itself has been outstanding, and because of that, it definitely reduces the impact on the community, makes the community safer and definitely helps with recovery.”

Meanwhile, assessors would visit the Limery on Friday, and Downey had put out an SOS for tradespeople and industrial electricians to help clean up silt from the property.

“If we can try to resurrect ourselves and just get machinery up and operational again … that would be the most amazing thing and at least we could start producing and keeping people in jobs.”

Downey said anyone who could help could get in contact through the company’s website or Facebook page.