A coastal campground in Hawke’s Bay has suffered flooding damage during wild weather, which also uprooted trees and knocked out power to thousands of properties across the region.
Despite the damage, outages and even some evacuations, vulnerable areas across Hawke’s Bay and Tararua largely breathed a sigh of relief on Monday that things were not worse, with one mayor saying “we dodged a bullet”.
Sunday night’s storm was forecast to be potentially damaging for the region, three years almost to the day since Cyclone Gabrielle.
The Tararua District Council called a “pre-emptive” state of emergency in anticipation of the wild weather, but fortunately the region did not suffer serious flooding following high winds and heavy rainfall.
The Blackhead Beach Camping Ground is owned by the Central Hawke’s Bay District Council. The council warned residents of the incoming weather on Friday.
Pictures from the campground on Monday morning appeared to show flooding damage to the site.
The Central Hawke’s Bay District Council confirmed the road to the campground was closed until Tuesday, when the council planned to take a digger and further assess the property.
The council understood no one was at the campground during the worst of the weather, which hit on Sunday night and Monday morning.
A Waipawa family were centimetres from disaster as a large macrocapa tree came crashing down next to their home.
Brent Wigzell, his wife and two adult daughters were inside their home not far from the township when a large tree at the back of the property came down about 3am.
“My daughters heard it and came in and woke us up and said the tree was on the house.
“Panic stations set in a little bit.
“I went out with the torch and managed to see it had just missed the house.
“It damaged a little bit of guttering in one corner, but, apart from that, that is really it. So we are extremely lucky.”
Wigzell said it could have been a lot worse. They still had power following the incident, and the tree also narrowly missed their water tank.
Well over 1000 properties were still without power around Hawke’s Bay as at noon on Monday. By about 3pm, there were just over 600 properties still without power.
Tararua Mayor Scott Gilmore said the council declared a state of emergency last night so “we could co-ordinate our response and support the community as the weather came through”. The state of emergency was still in place on Monday afternoon.
The council reported this morning that 15 people self-evacuated in Herbertville, including at the Herbertville Inn and Herbertville Campground.
Fortunately, Gilmore said, the weather pattern did not hit the district as hard as forecasts suggested.
Central Hawke’s Bay Mayor Will Foley reported a similar experience.
“We dodged a bullet. It wasn’t as bad as we were expecting,” he said.
“[However] there are still a lot of trees down, power cuts, schools being closed, so people are still being impacted.”
The Herbertville Campground, beside the Wainui River, shared a post on social media that it had been a “long night”.
“Yes, the river did burst its banks and everyone got out safe.”
Campers were evacuated to the town hall, but the campground reported the cabins appeared to be fine on Monday morning.
Herbertville Inn publican John Sedcole evacuated to the town hall alongside his staff, neighbours and the residents of the nearby campground.
Sedcole said the evacuation was a precaution because the Wainui River was about to “burst its banks in the campground so we shifted to the hall”.
He returned to the pub around 5.30am, just after high tide.
“The water level had dropped in the river and so had some of the surface water around the section,” he said.
“We’re without power but our generator we bought a short time ago is powering all our essential equipment.”
No flooding got inside the pub.
Sixteen schools in the district were closed on Monday, and there were power outages and trees down in the district.
Just further north, Hawke’s Bay was also hit hard by high winds and heavy rainfall.
Powerline companies Unison (Hastings and Napier), Centralines (Central Hawke’s Bay), and Firstlight (Wairoa) were working hard to restore power to impacted communities, with well over 1000 outages.
Most of the outages were in rural areas, including an outage still affecting over 500 properties in the Maraetōtara, Kahuranaki, Waimārama and Ocean Beach area as at noon on Monday.
Other major outages included one affecting about 350 properties in the Ōmakere, Blackhead, Aramoana, Pourerere, Elsthorpe and Kairakau area.
Several schools were closed in Hawke’s Bay today, including the likes of Patoka School and Argyll East School.
Hawke’s Bay Airport was disrupted, with some flights cancelled in and out of the region on Monday morning.
Flaxmere also suffered surface flooding on some streets.
Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery Mark Mitchell visited Wairoa on Sunday evening ahead of the wild weather.
Plenty of resources were dispatched to Wairoa in case of flooding.
Fortunately, there was no flooding to the township on Monday morning, and the Wairoa River mouth and another opening in the river bar (to the east of Pilot Hill) was flowing well.
It was a huge relief for the township, which has been impacted by serious floods in recent years.
Wairoa also deployed, for the first time, new Ark flood barriers as a precaution on Sunday night near the main playground in the township, and also along Kōpū Rd.
Some homes were recommended to self-evacuate on Sunday along Kaiwaitau Rd between Mahia and Mahanga ahead of the forecast rainfall but, fortunately, those homes did not flood near the stream.
A strong wind warning (orange) was in place for Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne Tairāwhiti until 9am today.
There was also a heavy rain warning (orange) for Tararua and for some parts of Hawke’s Bay such as south of Waipukurau and eastern Hawke’s Bay hills from Cape Kidnappers south until 10am today, and 7am for Tararua.
The Napier-Taihape Rd was closed this morning because of the weather. All state highways in Hawke’s Bay were open.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand has responded to plenty of calls for weather-related events.
In Hawke’s Bay on Monday morning, that included a call-out to Waimarama Holiday Park to assist with “an ablution block impacted by wind”, a roof lifting at a property in Waipukurau, and a tree threatening a house in Taradale.
Meanwhile, volunteer firefighter James Brett Harold has detailed his busy night in Wimbledon near Herbertville.
He saw the Wainui River and its feeder creeks were rising before he went to bed and, when his daughter woke him at 2am Monday, he went to check the creek near his property to see it was pretty close to coming up next to his house.
“I was quite surprised at how fast the creek and rivers came up because it was like clear, flowing clear and low even right up to [Sunday] afternoon,” he said.
Fortunately, it started to recede.
He went for a drive towards Herbertville only to find fallen trees blocking his way, so Harold returned home to grab a chainsaw and carved a path through the debris.
He arrived in Herbertville to find the campground had been evacuated to the hall.
When Hawke’s Bay Today spoke to Harold, he had just returned home after carving a path for local police and lines workers in another area.
“Now we’re just waiting on Centralines to come and restore the power,” he said.
Harold believed the clean-up from the storm would be “nowhere near [Cyclone] Gabrielle”.