Cyclone Gabrielle: Whanganui firefighter in Hawke’s Bay response says conditions were unlike anything he’d seen

Conditions in Hawke's Bay's Esk Valley after Cyclone Gabrielle were of a magnitude he had not seen before, a Whanganui firefighter said. Photo / Supplied

Six Whanganui firefighters have returned from helping the cyclone relief effort in Hawke’s Bay, with Urban Search and Rescue officer Aaron Summerhays saying the conditions he witnessed were of a magnitude he’d never seen.

The six left Whanganui on Tuesday, February 14, and Summerhays said he and three other local officers participated in Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) operations, with a further two involved in support roles.

The group were stationed in Hawke’s Bay throughout their stay, specifically working in red-zone areas in the Esk Valley and Puketapu.

Summerhays, who is a Whanganui Fire Station senior officer, has been part of the national USAR team for 20 years but said he hadn’t been a part of rescue work in a flood of this magnitude.

“Even what I did in New South Wales last year, it was just at a different scale, a different way it performed with how it affected different properties.”

What surprised him was how different conditions were in different areas.

“Different soil types, a lot of silt build-up in some areas compared to other areas that didn’t have the silt and the debris come through,” Summerhays said.

“Even in Hawke’s Bay, the Esk Valley, how that was impacted was completely different to some of the other areas that were also severely impacted.”

He said the Whanganui group participated in primary searches over their first few days, which involved doing a rapid assessment of areas and picking up people who needed rescuing where they could.

For the rest of the week they moved into a secondary mode, where they focused on more inaccessible properties that required more resources to reach.

Summerhays said a lot of rescues were performed by helicopter before he and his squad got to the area concerned, but he and the squad were still performing rescues throughout the first few days of their placement.

“We were primarily in rescue mode, that’s what our focus was.”

He and the rest of the Whanganui squad came home on Tuesday night, but the search and rescue operations were continuing in the area.

“We still have a USAR component in place ... the Australian USAR team have been deployed and are assisting us at the moment,” he said.

As of yesterday, 2246 people were uncontactable/unaccounted for following the cyclone and 11 people had been confirmed dead.