No quick f ix for homes hit by floods

Insurer Suncorp expects 95% of flood-damaged Auckland homes to be fully reinstated within three to six months.

Suncorp, which owns Vero and has a majority stake in AA Insurance, has so far had more than 3000 claims after torrential rain and flooding hit Auckland and other parts of the upper North Island.

The work to reinstate homes has already begun.

‘‘We’re saying six months probably for the worst. Three to six months is the timeframe we are putting on for the reinstatement of 95% of them,’’ said Steve Booth, who is heading Suncorp’s operational response to the floods.

After flooding in Westport in July 2021, it took more than a year for some homes to be repaired, and some remain empty to this day. Booth said those that had not yet been made habitable were not insured by Suncorp.

Suncorp managed the repairs for people it insured, unless they opted to take a cash settlement, he said.

Every managed repair done by Suncorp in Westport was finished by February last year, Booth said, and he expected a similar timeline in Auckland.

‘‘We have to strip them, and dry them out, because we have to get back to a dry standard for the frames. Sometimes we can just open the window and let nature do its stuff.’’

But other times homes had to be sealed, and dehumidifiers brought in.

‘‘It could be a month to get a house dry.’’

The availability of contractors and building supplies also affected how long it took to reinstate homes.

Booth has spent time at the ‘‘epicentres’’ of the flooding in Auckland, where creeks became rivers in minutes, overspilling their banks, and inundating land, and homes.

One was the area in Milford around the Wairau Creek. Another was in Swanson and Henderson in Auckland’s west, where he says the Henderson Creek Te Wai o Pareira temporarily became the ‘‘Henderson River’’.

But flooding was widespread, including parts of South Auckland. Throughout the central suburbs of Auckland there were pockets of flooding in low-lying parts of Parnell and Epsom.

‘‘There’s a tipping point. Communities will handle a certain amount of rain. I always think 20 to 25mm of rain an hour. Most of the infrastructure will handle that, but when it gets up to three times [that] no drains will handle it. It has to do something, so it ponds, it pools. It floods houses,’’ Booth said.