Cyclone Gabrielle second anniversary: Revisiting Gisborne’s Fergusson Drive

Lizzy Burns with three of her children - Oscar, 11, left, Monty, 6, and Ruby, 13. Photo / James Pocock

Homes on a Gisborne street impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle two years ago are gradually being raised for protection from another flood.

The Taruheru River rose to extreme levels and flooded homes on the river side of Fergusson Drive in Te Hapara during the early hours of February 14, 2023.

About 20 houses were yellow-stickered at that time.

Fergusson Dr resident Lizzy Burns has decided not to lift her family’s home but that decision could make it uninsurable in the event of flooding.

Her home was rebuilt after Cyclone Gabrielle sent nearly half a metre of flooded river water through it.

“Technically we could have rebuilt from there down but we had wallpaper on our wall so it made sense to re-GIB,” Burns said.

“It’s a whole brand new house.”

Burns said her insurance company was great in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle.

But she was advised her policy would not cover the home if they did not get it raised.

Burns said the cost of doing that so soon after the rebuild was prohibitive and it would mean her family would be without a home while work was done.

To be compliant meant removing everything touching the floor and replacing it at their own cost, she said.

“We are stuck between a bit of a rock and a hard place. Do you break up a beautiful, brand-new home for the sake of insurance or do you wait for [a flood] event and remediate it once the event has happened?

“We will then be out of home for who knows how long and there is a housing crisis, so where are we going to go?

“I’m going to have to pay rent for the time we are out of home. We obviously have choices but it is not an easy point.”

Burns said a few homes on the street were vacant while being raised two years after Gabrielle.

“I count my lucky stars that we have a home and we are happily in our home. We just hope like hell the river doesn’t flood.”

She didn’t get “rain anxiety” but said she felt more nervous about the weather than she did in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle.

“Now I am, like, can I afford to rebuild my house? Can I afford to do all those things?’ Is the money being spent in the right places on the rivers to prevent another event from happening? I think about that a lot more now than I ever did before.”

Fergusson Dr was “a cool little community” with good street morale, she said.

“Our street supported everyone [during Cyclone Gabrielle]. We had people on the other side of the street come over to support people on this side, cleaning or feeding or borrowing trailers or boxes.

“Some of those rural areas were all on their own. At least I had someone there to sympathise with me.”