Cyclone Gabrielle survivors in Hawke’s Bay still on hunt for homes a year after floods

Vivian Bell (right) and mum Shirley Galyer are still on the hunt for a permanent home. They survived the floods at their old property in Eskdale (pictured) along with family members (from left) Steven and Phillip Galyer and Alex Bell. Photo / Paul Taylor

Cyclone Gabrielle survivor Vivian Bell is still looking for a place to move into a year after the deadly floods struck Hawke’s Bay.

She has been living in a caravan on a family member’s property in Hastings since narrowly escaping with her life one year ago.

target="_blank">Floodwaters tore through her rental property in Eskdale just north of Napier during the early hours of February 14 last year, displacing her along with her siblings and mother and father-in-law, who lived in neighbouring homes.

Bell said she was grateful to have survived, but it had been difficult since then with the struggle of finding a new home.

She is not alone, as plenty of others are also still on the hunt for affordable housing to move on with their lives, including Bell’s mum and father-in-law, who remain in temporary lodgings provided by the Government’s Temporary Accommodation Service.

“That is the issue. Being out in the country, it was cheaper living and it was affordable,” Bell said, of their old rentals in Eskdale.

“Now you look at places and, jeepers, you either want to have a roof over your head or to eat, that is the situation.”

She said moving on from the traumatic event had been challenging.

“To be honest, every time it rained [after the cyclone] I had to put headphones on and I would listen to The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun because it was the only way I could get to sleep,” she said.

“Coming up to the anniversary and it is still really raw for everybody. It is not easy.”

Bell was caught in the wild floodwaters along with her three siblings, mum and father-in-law, and niece.

Steven Galyer inside his long-term Eskdale rental a year on from the cyclone. He and his wife Shirley are still looking for a permanent home. Photo / Paul Taylor

The family lived in three separate homes on a large property off SH5 in Eskdale.

Emergency services advised it was too late for them to evacuate, so the family scrambled to get everyone into the tallest building on the property, which was a two-storey shed.

They watched the floodwaters rise higher and higher in the shed while holding a “please help” sign to the window of the second floor.

The water was about one step away from flooding the second floor when it stopped rising, to the immense relief of the survivors inside.

They lost vehicles and most of their belongings in the floods, and she said it had been extremely tough on her mum and father-in-law, who had lived there for two decades.

A car buried in silt at the back of the property a year after the floods. It was one of several cars the family owned that were rendered unusable by the floods. Photo / Paul Taylor

Bell returned to their property every couple of days after the cyclone to look for their pets, and found three of their cats, one of them some six weeks after the event.

She said her family would likely head along to a service in Napier for the anniversary and then to Bay View Hotel, which helped house them in the days straight after the cyclone.

“I want to thank them. They were lovely, lovely people.

“They welcomed us and did everything for us - just amazing people.”

Gary Hamilton-Irvine is a Hawke’s Bay-based reporter who covers a range of news topics including business, councils, breaking news and cyclone recovery. He formerly worked at News Corp Australia.