"I had a new car in our garage. I got my wife Gail to get her car out, but I didn't have a show of getting mine out - it was under 1200mm of water within minutes."
Graeme is still not living in his house in Puriri Crescent. Like others in the town, he is frustrated with what he believes is a lack of communication from the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.
"Last time in 2004, they had a public meeting and apologised.
Graeme said they were convinced there was mismanagement from local authorities in the lead up to the disaster.
"They should have been dropping that water from the dam, on the tides, at least four days before that storm got here. And they didn't," Graeme said.
"It was a man-made disaster, it wasn't a natural disaster, I won't let them get away with describing it as that because it wasn't."
Bay of Plenty Regional Council chairman Doug Leeder.
Bay of Plenty Regional Council chairman Doug Leeder stood behind the council's actions.
"You can never guarantee that you can withstand the force of Mother Nature.
"We can do our best to mitigate those adverse events, but I think it would be a brave person who would stand up and say this will never happen again. You are dealing with geology - with the elements.
"We shouldn't overlook the fact that the Cullen Report, who did the review on this, said that, despite what happened, everyone had done their best.
"These people don't make commentary lightly when it is their reputational risk in terms of their skill set at risk. I am sorry that some in the community don't accept it, but ultimately they are not the engineers."
Graeme believed the Cullen Report was being used by the regional authority to defer responsibility to communicate with the residents of Edgecumbe.
"I need a guarantee, and so does everyone in Edgecumbe. We need a guarantee that the regional council are going to do their job properly. What they are proposing - I don't think it will fix the problem.
"They plan on building another stopbank in the middle of the road, a bigger and higher one. That is stupid because all they're doing is bringing the river closer into town. We need it taken away, out of town."
Leeder accepted more could be done to comfort and communicate with Edgecumbe residents and said steps have been taken to ensure they were informed of developments.
"We have enlisted a representative community group, who have worked with designers and engineers in terms of designing that stopbank and those community members have spoken to members of the community, from what I understand."
He said the regional council followed all protocol and procedure during the disaster.
"Everybody did their level best in those circumstances. It was unfortunate but do I believe that the regional council made any fundamental errors in terms of the historic construction of the stopbank - no.
"Do I think the staff in the flood management room did their very best? Yes," Leeder said.
"The circumstances that prevailed on April 6, 2017, at the time the rivers and drainage staff were endeavouring to reinforce that wall. They had to pull out because the wall was in imminent failure.
"I understand the community's concern. But on the basis that I believe the council historically and at the time did their level best, I can apologise for the event, but do I defer any responsibility to the regional council for the event? No. I see no evidence of that."
