Any conjecture regarding other fatalities is unhelpful, Civil Defence says.
A fleet of helicopters has been used for rescues. More than 9000 people were evacuated as areas such as Taradale and rural areas the Esk Valley, Dartmoor and Fernhill were severely hit by flooding and slips.
The Esk River rose so high it crashed through homes and almost submerged roofs.
Many fled with nothing but the clothes they wore. Some swam through the torrent. Helicopters rescued some from roofs.
The bursting of the Tūtaekurī banks led to the inundation of Transpower’s Redclyffe substation near Taradale, with 1.5-metre flows going through the control room, causing the blackout.
By Thursday morning, more than 40,000 customers remained without electricity, and there was no suggestion a fix was imminent - instead, Transpower was attempting to re-route the supply through Hastings.
With communication with many areas cut off, the collapse of the centre span of the Brookfields Bridge between Meeanee and Pakowhai on Tuesday was an early indicator the storm would be at least as bad as Cyclone Bola, which destroyed the State Highway 2 bridge in Wairoa and caused widespread calamity throughout the North Island.
All five major arterial bridges between Napier and Hastings – the others near Clive, the Expressway and Waiohiki bridges near Taradale, and the Fernhill bridge on State Highway 50 - were all out of action.
Along with the closing of other highways to the north, it meant Napier was geographically severed from the rest of the world, as was Wairoa.
The first opening of the Napier-Hastings routes, through Clive on Wednesday night, lasted less than 15 hours before national highways agency Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency announced it was being closed for bridge assessment. It then reopened on Thursday afternoon to critical workers and emergency services.
Then on Thursday night, part of the Hawke’s Bay Expressway opened, offering another lifeline to Hastings for those for whom travel is essential.
It was needed. News of the re-opening of SH51 had led to Thursday morning traffic queues stretching more than 5km from Waitangi Bridge near Awatoto through the length of Georges Dr in Napier.
They were not the only queues, for as news spread of a prolonged electricity outage - firstly for “an extended period”, then possibly two weeks - supermarket and hardware store queues stretched for hundreds of metres as people hunted out everything from non-perishables to barbecues and gas cylinders.
And it was not the only time people ignored warnings about Gabrielle, which had lurked ominously since Waitangi Day, when it was “first noted as a developing tropical low” to the south of the Solomon Islands.
It took almost a week to throw its lot at New Zealand, first in the north, and then in the Bay, with significantly greater force and devastation than had been forecast – heavy rain, a night of strong winds, and a coastal swell going directly on to Napier’s Marine Parade beach.
It was at the beach that, again, people ignored some of the warnings, with at least 200 fronting up to watch Tuesday’s high tide - some tripped or were knocked over as waves crashed further up the beach than expected.
Some ventured for adventure on the viewing platform. which extended out above the crashing waves.
The heaviest rainfall, according to the statistics, came mainly in areas that often get lots of rain, but for six months the net had been spread wider, with many areas now having had above-average rainfall for seven months in a row, in some cases breaking previous records.
As the reality of the long-term power cut emerged, Civil Defence leaders made an appeal for more diesel generators to help power essential operations.
Among those already being used were dozens acquired by Napier-Taupō-Rotorua electricity distributor Unison Networks for the people of the Rangitaiki Plains after the heaviest snowfall in the area in more than 50 years toppled about 200 poles that took the associated lines with them in 2016, leading to a repair job that lasted several months before normal supply was restored to all of the customers.
Naval vessel Te Mana is expected to finally berth at Napier Port on Friday, on a mercy mission rather than the purpose of its earlier scheduled Thursday arrival, as a feature of the Art Deco Festival.
The festival, expected to be Napier on the rebound from cancellations and restrictions of the Covid-l9 crisis, is cancelled.
Also set to berth as Napier Port reopens is the Unique Guardian, with fuel.
In Wairoa, cut off and pleading for outside help, mayor Craig Little called it the most catastrophic weather event in the area in living memory. That included Cyclone Bola.
