Five hundred Te Karaka residents were evacuated and had to wait 27 hours on top of a hill. One resident told TVNZ that the flooding was ‘devastating’. Image / TVNZ
East Coast MP Kiri Allan has been left in tears after hundreds of people were left without homes in Te Karaka, a small settlement inland from Gisborne, due to the destruction caused by Cyclone Gabrielle.
Allan said she wept with the community in Te Karaka last night, “feeling their pain, anguish and anxiety”.
“Gabrielle has left a pathway of trauma which will take many hands to heal.”
About 500 people were evacuated from their homes at 5am on Tuesday as the Waipāoa River breached in multiple places, destroying properties in its path.
They were stuck on top of a hill for 27 hours, not knowing whether or not help was on the way.
Cut off from all forms of communication, the fire service and the Civil Defence team got the entire town up on the hills and they waited, with over 150 staying on the hill in their cars overnight, Allan said.
“There are 60 people without homes to go to, ranging from babies through to the elderly.
“They are all together at the school, and the Te Karaka community is wrapped tightly together.
“It’s clear to me that the town, and I’m sure there will be others, that need support from those communities around them that have been less impacted.”
They were finally able to return to their homes yesterday, only to find utter devastation.
Speaking to Breakfast, one woman described the whole ordeal as devastating for the community.
“Don’t get me wrong, we’re happy that we’re still alive. But it’s the devastation afterwards.
“We don’t even know where we’re going to stay after this.”
Another local said everything happened so quickly in the early hours of Tuesday when mass flooding caused them to evacuate about 5am.
“It was you either move now or you’re on your own,” one man said.
“We all went up the hill and we just watched it unfold in front of us and watched our town basically get drowned.”
Another woman spoke of the difficulties surrounding there being no communication services available at the moment.
“We had no communication anywhere to call family overseas - and we still can’t. We lost everything,” she said.
Two people turned up to meet where the Breakfast team were filming live in Gisborne - just so they could let family who may be watching know that they are alive.
A woman named Alicia was emotional as she spoke to the camera.
“Alright whānau. Four o’clock in the morning I was swimming out of my house with my two kiddies being saved by my cousins,” she said.
“Had to swim out on to the road. The river was swift - my house filled up in like five minutes. The waters just came from Te Karaka...the water came...and wiped us out - all of us.”
Another local, Raymond, is asked if he managed to save anything before evacuating. He starts to speak, before becoming too emotional.
“Nah. Just total...nothing,” he says looking down, shaking his head.
“And our marae too.”
Asked if he would like to say anything to his family who may be watching, Raymond says: “Just to our whānau, we’re alive. Even though all of our homes are gone - and our marae...Just to let our whānau know that we’re okay.
“We can start again.”
Allan told NZME this morning the community was going through a heartbreaking time after a person was found dead in floodwaters.
“We know that we are not in isolation. Other lives have also been lost as a consequence of this event so just anybody going through that trauma it’s certainly impacting the community in a quite real and visceral way.
“There are plenty more stages I think of emotion, grief and people just having to grapple with what just occurred and that will become more apparent in the next couple of days.”
She said today, the urgent priority for the region was to make an accurate needs assessment.
“The biggest focus right now is to really get connectivity up and running - food and water, the basic fuel is our priority, making sure that our town has access to those.
“From a Waka Kotahi perspective getting SH2 that connectivity through to Opōtiki, Auckland and other areas, is opened up for supplies in the first instance. Looks like we are getting some positive news there so that’s going to take off quite a bit, and bring a significant amount of relief to the region.
“Secondly, it is understanding the welfare needs of people and making sure they got basic things like clothing, food, housing, and a roof for people’s heads. We are still in that stage at the moment it is really challenging. We have significant disruption to the network throughout.”
Allan said Tairāwhiti was an experienced region when it came to emergency management but the scale of this event was widespread.
“In Te Karaka last night, I can say that probably a couple of hundred people were in the hall. They have not slept in days, they have lost everything they own, you know, young children, elderly, grandparents and everybody in that hall. Real shell-shocked I think is a fair way of describing things.
“We know in these types of situations after the shock there are waves of various types of emotions that come through when people realise that a lot has been lost.
“I think for us as leaders in this region, we need to make sure we are providing a reassuring hand, that we are there and their needs are being heard. Give space to civil defence teams to be able to prioritise those needs as we go through.”
Wainui Gisborne now live with thousands of customers reconnected. I never thought I would call a tower with power a “thing of beauty”. Many more towers have power restored across the NI. Still thousands of customers out so much more work to do. Teams are working hard. Stay safe pic.twitter.com/amvn03eCNW
— Jason Paris (@JasonCParis) February 15, 2023
Allan said the Prime Minister was coming to the region today to meet with some of those people that had been hit the hardest which she thought would be really appreciated.
“It is really helpful. Army has been deployed here, we have got Navy resources coming in today, bringing critical supplies, water, and food. Right now, Starlink connectivity is being a lifesaver, a much-needed tool.
“When PM comes in today, the community will take the opportunity to show him around some of the most impacted areas and meet people that have been significantly impacted.”
Secondly, there would be a discussion of the imminent needs of people- infrastructure, road network and fuel, She said.
Next, discussing business needs, the region is a large community of producers, and “many crops have been decimated”.
Gisborne Mayor Rehette Stoltz told NZME this morning, as a community they were devastated to hear about the death of a person in floodwaters.
She was made aware of this yesterday afternoon.
“At this stage, it is an active police investigation. We need to respect that process and any information will come directly from the police.”
As of now, they were still unable to communicate with communities, Stoltz said. And she was relying on Starlink.
“We are slowly connecting our communities.”
Once the region’s connectivity was restored they would be able to touch base with most communities to “hear that everyone is okay”, she said.
“Some of our coastal communities - Tokomaru Bay is cut off but we do know civil defence teams are there, the community is still cut off; Te Karaka, there are people evacuated and we could send Unimogs out there so we could get bare specifics to people but as we are now connecting up we will be able to see the real impact.”
Stoltz said the community had really done it tough in the last three days because they had been cut off.
“Now as we connect up we will have a real understanding of the damage to infrastructure but also real community needs.”
HMNZS Manawanui was coming to the region’s port today with some supplies, Stoltz said.
“Waka Kotahi is working hard to get Unimogs through SH2 to bring supplies in and out of our region so it is all go now.
“Our main priority is to connect our community so our people can communicate. It’s been really tough massive emotional toll on our community that they cannot communicate, tell their whānau they are okay, they can’t tell us what their needs are, so that’s a real focus.”
Stoltz said they would be going to isolated communities on the Coast to make sure they had the supplies they needed.
Water was at an “absolutely critical level”, she said.
“I know a Hercules flew in last night with a military water saturation device which will be a short-term solution, not a fix.”
Supermarkets had opened but the region urgently needed trucks to come in to keep them stocked, Stoltz said.
“I have not heard any first-hand reports of panic buying, it’s cash only at this stage, and supermarkets have limited eftpos transactions.
“At the supermarkets, they are limited in what you can buy anyway. In this region we are cut off, we need to look after the critical supplies that we have because we do not know what is coming in.
“We will have a clearer understanding of our levels as we open up today.”
TVNZ’s Breakfast is broadcasting a list of names of people in Te Karaka, a small settlement inland from Gisborne, who have had all communication services cut after the devastating floods on Tuesday morning.
The names were passed on in a bid to let families outside of Te Karaka know that they are alive.
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