Editorial: Hawke’s Bay’s 24 months of hard knocks since the cyclone

The damage to Kereru Gorge. It's been a long road to recovery in Hawke's Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle.

THREE KEY FACTS

• Two years after Cyclone Gabrielle, Hawke’s Bay is still recovering, with scars remaining evident.
• Buyouts of red-zoned homes have been quicker than Christchurch’s, but still painful for residents.
• Community tensions persist, with backlash against developments and disputes over flood prevention measures.

Two years since Cyclone Gabrielle. In Hawke’s Bay, where the damage and loss of life was greatest, it’s been a long 24 months.

So much work has been done, but the region doesn’t feel like it’s fully back on its feet yet, and the scars, both on the landscape and in our collective psyches, remain quite fresh.

The past year has been framed by the buyouts of red-zoned homes, and the ideas presented for our rivers to help prevent all of this tragedy happening to us again.

The buyout has mercifully been a faster process than that endured by Christchurch residents after the quake, but it’s been no less painful for those who’ve been a part of it.

We’ve knocked down a large part of Esk Valley, and parts of Pakowhai, and now it looks like we’ll do the same in a piece of North Clyde in Wairoa, in the pursuit of preventing a similar disaster in future.

It was and is the inherently sensible thing to do, but in doing so, I think we’ve broken our sense of community as a region a little more than we would have liked.

From afar, I’ve watched the reaction in California to their devastating fires.

The celebrities and firefighters standing arm in arm at a pop fundraiser concert yelling “the fires can take our homes, but they cannot take our community, because we will rebuild, no matter what” is something that both grated and inspired.

The cheers, the Americanism, the unity - it all felt pretty powerful.

We didn’t get that from our leaders, because it’s so foolhardy. The fires, or in our case the floods, will simply return again if communities are built in the wrong place.

But the rage from those forced off their land doesn’t die, nor does it for those who’ve watched their community be reshaped around them, and it will last generations.

It’s why when the whiff of a new business moving to Pakowhai without consent hits the neighbours, it’s met with so much backlash.

It’s why a Crown manager - on a $1100 a day wage no less - is needed just to prevent bickering between Wairoa District Council and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council about what the solution is to the town’s flooding.

It’s why we’ve all been a bit frazzled at various points over the past 24 months.

For now, we carry on together in the Hawke’s Bay sunshine, just hoping that what we’re doing is the right thing.