Cyclone Gabrielle: Wild caravan escape from Napier’s Esk Valley floods - ‘It chased us up the hill’

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A Napier man has recalled a wild escape with his caravan as rising floodwaters threatened to sweep him and his family away.

Shayne Daysh was the only resident at Eskdale Holiday Park to escape with his caravan in the deadly floods which ravaged Esk Valley in the early hours of Tuesday, north of Napier.

“It chased us all the way up the hill. I thought it was going to take me.”

He said emergency services were knocking on caravan doors about 2am or 2.30am that morning and said “go now”.

Fortunately, Daysh had his caravan hooked up to his vehicle and hot-footed it out of the park, while his partner and 10-year-old daughter followed close behind in their car.

Shayne Daysh with his daughter Diamond Daysh, 10, who narrowly escaped the floods in Esk Valley. Photo / Warren Buckland

“I just booted it all the way up the hill.

“There were five cars behind me and just one made it - my wife and my daughter.”

He said all those people in the other cars behind him had survived but lost their vehicles to the floodwaters which rose quickly across the roads.

He said he could not see the road as he ploughed through floodwaters toward the Eskdale School evacuation point, a drive he has done many times before.

“I have done it 1000 times and just knew where to go - I was going so fast.

Destruction in Esk Valley north of Napier following floods. Photo / Warren Buckland

“It was scary. There were a lot of apples from the orchards [floating past].”

He said when they reached the school the sound from the floodwaters behind him was shocking.

“All you could hear was the cries of people. It was so dark. People were screaming and houses smashing and hundreds of sheep just crying out.”

He said it was only a five-minute drive up the hill but it “felt like forever”.

The floodwaters destroyed properties across Esk Valley. Photo / Warren Buckland

He said they did not know where they would go now and had been living at the caravan park for three years.

His partner, Richelle, is a nurse and was helping care for people at Bay View Hotel which has been transformed into an evacuation centre with locals supplying food and blankets and clothing.

As at Thursday morning, three deaths had been confirmed from the floods in Hawke’s Bay.

Two were linked to the Esk Valley flood which included a child discovered on Wednesday afternoon in Eskdale, and a person whose body washed up at nearby Bay View on Tuesday night. A woman also died in Putorino further north following a landslide.