Susane Caccioppoli and little Ivy Collins were both torn away from people who loved them in the raging floodwaters.
Shona Wilson was buried in a landslide. Her partner and her daughter dug through the dirt for hours with their bare hands, trying to find her.
Ian McLaughlan died alone in his flooded home after the rest of his street was evacuated. He had climbed on to a washing machine in his laundry to try to stay above chin-high water.
George Luke was helicoptered to hospital alive, but succumbed to extreme hypothermia and multiple organ failure after three nights lost in a hellscape of slips and fallen timber on a remote mountain road.
All of these people died because of Cyclone Gabrielle, which swept down the eastern side of the North Island in February 2023.
In the calm of a Hastings courthouse this week, their loved ones, the bereaved, first responders and survivors of the storm told their stories of endurance, heroism and grief.
As they gave their sometimes emotional testimony to a coroner, a montage of the faces of people who were lost in the cyclone and the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods two weeks earlier was placed at the front of the court and in the public gallery.
A headline above the faces, between two hearts, said “Remembered with love”.
Shona Wilson stayed up late on February 13, 2023 to listen to a weather forecast that reassured her Cyclone Gabrielle had been downgraded.
As she went to bed, she scratched her partner Bill Chrystal’s head and told him, “I love you. Thank you for helping me live my dreams.”
She was referring to the life they had built together on a remote property near Tūtira, in northern Hawke’s Bay.
It had been her dream to live close to the land, surrounded by nature and family.
“She loved getting her hands dirty, growing food in her garden, and she had a deep love for her bees and her horses,” Chrystal told the coronial hearing.
About 3am on February 14, Chrystal was awoken by what he thought was a large earthquake. It wasn’t. A landslide had hit the house and smashed through the wall.
Chrystal and Skye Wilson, Shona’s daughter, escaped the house into the “ferocious” wind and torrential rain of the cyclone.
They realised Shona was missing.
“We spent what felt like forever searching for her and trying to dig through the muddy debris,” Chrystal said.
But they were also in a dangerous situation. The mud was waist-deep in places and more slips were still coming down around them.
They retreated to a safer spot and as daylight dawned, managed to get a bar of phone reception.
Skye got a message out to Chrystal’s son, who in turn relayed it to Cherie Mackintosh, whose husband, Shaw Mackintosh, was in the local volunteer fire brigade.
Shaw rallied his father Graham and cousin Ben Mackintosh, also volunteer firefighters, and they set out for Chrystal’s property but found the roads impassable.
In the meantime, a neighbour, Greg Myers, had reached the house by bridging a flooded stream with two farm gates.
With no tools, they started looking for Shona in the mud by hand.
“We tried to dig to get Shona out, but as we did the mud and water would fill the hole again,” Chrystal said.
“We were all digging from about 6.30am till about 9.30am. We had no shovels, only our hands.”
The Mackintoshes arrived to take control of the scene after hailing a passing helicopter with the help of the local police constable.
More farmers also turned up and got shovels and a digger to help.
After a while, they uncovered a blue blanket and with it, Shona’s body. She was about 10m from where the bed should have been in the house.
Chrystal paid tribute to his partner, who was 57.
“Shona was incredibly capable and curious. She spoke four languages – English, German, French, and she taught herself Scottish Gaelic. Te reo was next on her list,” he said.
“Over her life, she was an environmentalist, a trained teacher, an interpreter at the French Embassy and a nanny.
“More importantly, she was a daughter, a sister, a mother, and a grandmother. She was a role model and an inspiration to all who crossed her path.
“Her family always came first. Her smile melted hearts and warmed souls. Her kindness and gentleness were profound, and her love of life and nature was immense.”
Three years after the cyclone, some things still rankle with Chrystal – about not receiving warnings, the deployment of search and rescue staff, and being assigned a police liaison officer who never responded to his texts seeking support.
He also remembers a Fire and Emergency New Zealand official referring to the landslip as a “crime scene”, when the discovery of Shona’s body put it under police jurisdiction, meaning the first responders needed to stop digging.
“I was angry and said that the crime was the hill coming down and burying Shona, and that if the police did not arrive before dark, I would dig Shona out myself because I did not want her to stay in the ground overnight.”
Shona’s body was recovered after police arrived in the early evening.
Chrystal said he asked to see her and was told it was not allowed.
Ian McLaughlan, 76, stayed in his house at Waiohiki, southwest of Napier, during Cyclone Gabrielle despite an invitation to shelter elsewhere.
As the cyclone approached, his brother Murray and sister-in-law Christine tried to convince him to stay with them, but he wanted to remain at his own house to look after the landlord’s cat.
When Murray called to check on him on the morning of February 14, Ian said he was trapped in the house by flooding.
Later calls and texts went unanswered.
Murray and three other people said they told Fire and Emergency and the police that Ian was trapped at various times during February 14 and 15, but no action appears to have been taken.
When Murray went to look for his brother on February 15, he was told by a police officer that everyone in his street had been evacuated, and that he should check the schools where they were sheltering.
Ian was not there.
After stewing on the situation all night, Murray filed a missing person report at Napier police station early in the morning of February 16.
The details were taken down but he was again told the whole road had been evacuated.
Murray then approached a uniformed officer in the street, Sergeant Carl Southwick.
Southwick told the inquiry that he drove immediately to the Emergency Operations Centre and organised a crew, including himself and four soldiers with Unimog vehicles.
They went to McLaughlan’s house and found it a “mud bath”, with 30cm to 50cm of silt across the entire yard.
Southwick entered and searched the house, noting the water mark on the walls that showed it had flooded to a depth of about 1.4m.
He found Ian McLaughlan dead on the laundry floor. He believed the elderly man had climbed on top of his washing machine in the flood.
Murray McLaughlan was unable to speak for his brother at the inquiry due to his deteriorating physical and mental health. Evidence was presented on his behalf by Nigel Kynoch, an Anglican minister.
He said Cyclone Gabrielle and its effects had been “devastating” for Murray, and for Christine before her death in 2025.
“Murray feels the whole thing was a complete mess-up. He believes Ian should have been rescued. Murray told people where Ian was,” Kynoch told the inquiry.
“He told me that he cannot stop thinking about Ian, and that he can’t get these events out of his head.”
Susane Caccioppoli and toddler Ivy Collins were both swept away by floodwaters that surged down Esk Valley, north of Napier, in the early hours of February 14.
Caccioppoli had been in a house with her friend Gareth Jones, which was ripped apart by the flood in the early hours.
They had tried to shelter in the roof space and even made a final phone call to Caccioppoli’s daughter, knowing the danger they were facing.
Then, Jones said, he could “see the roof trusses snapping around me” and they were cast out into the raging flood.
Jones tried to hold on to his friend for as long as he could in the water, but lost her when he snagged his foot and was pulled under.
Caccioppoli’s body was later found on a beach.
Ivy Collins, 2, was lifted from her mother Ella Collins’ shoulders as they tried to escape their flooded house and were suddenly hit by an overwhelming directional current.
Ivy’s father Jack Collins dived off after his daughter but was immediately swept 25m downstream and could not save her.
Ella told Coroner Erin Woolley it was “nothing short of a miracle” that he managed to make his way back to Ella and their other daughter, Imogen, who were holding on to a hedge.
Soon afterwards, Jack broke his back kicking his way from inside a house to the roof, where the surviving members of his family would be rescued by helicopter.
He has been unable to work since.
When George Luke and Maureen Goodman became stranded in their car between slips on the Taihape-Napier road late on February 13, they feared another landslide would sweep them down the hill.
They decided to walk to find help, and soon became cold and exhausted in thigh-deep mud and slips and fallen trees “as far as the eye could see”, Goodman told the coroner.
Goodman continued on her own to seek help after Luke, who had lost his shoes and was without his medication for diabetes, could go no further.
It took her two days and another two nights to reach safety.
A drink bottle she had left as a marker helped guide rescuers back to Luke.
They were both airlifted to hospital, but Luke died there on February 16.
Coroner Woolley reassured Goodman that she was an “extraordinary” person in making her two-day effort to summon help.
“Everything you did to try to help your partner was extraordinary.”
Helen Street, 86, had a heart disease and respiratory illness, and was under palliative care in her Napier home when Cyclone Gabrielle struck.
She was heavily reliant on oxygen and had an electrically powered machine to deliver it.
Her family believe that a prolonged loss of power to her property contributed to her death on February 16.
The coronial inquiry has been running since July last year, with blocks of hearings so far in Hastings and Auckland, where it has heard evidence about people who died in the anniversary weekend flooding there a fortnight before Cyclone Gabrielle.
In all, Coroner Woolley is investigating 19 deaths, including three people who are believed to have taken their own lives in the months after the cyclone.
On Monday, the inquiry will convene in Gisborne and will hear evidence about the disappearance of Joseph Ahuriri, 40, on the night the cyclone struck, February 13-14, 2023.
Ahuriri was captured on camera at a Bay View fuel stop north of Napier with his white Toyota Hilux but never reached Gisborne, where he was heading.
He has never been found despite searches using metal-detecting drones, Navy divers, shoreline sweeps and contractors investigating mounds of rubble along the side of the roads.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay.