Gita clean-up can be draining
Thankfully, McLellan’s house was on piles and the water level just reached the bottom step of her deck.
She said there wasn’t much she could do about it, just wait for the sun to dry it out.
The Wairau Valley School could be closed for a third day on Friday.
‘‘We are watching the water level and we intend to be open [on Friday] if we can,’’ principal Karen O’Donnell said.
She was concerned some students would not be able to get through the flooding at the school entrance safely.
‘‘We’ve got some high-needs children with medical issues and if we need to get an ambulance in, am I putting them at risk?’’
The school’s pump shed and two changing rooms were flooded in the storm, with the water in the shed 20 centimetres deep on Wednesday.
The ‘‘compromised’’ septic tanks needed to be cleaned, O’Donnell said.
‘‘We lifted the lid off [the septic tanks] yesterday and it was to the top,’’ she said.
‘‘There have been so many rubberneckers ... People just drive in and drive out for no purpose. It’s just annoying.’’ Rochelle Stephen
McLellan’s daughter Rochelle Stephen said the flooding wasn’t helped by people driving in and out of Morse St for a nosy.
‘‘There have been so many rubber-neckers ... People just drive in and drive out for no purpose. It’s just annoying.’’
Stephen anticipated the rain would leave a horrible smell once it had drained away, like it did a fortnight ago.
Wairau Valley resident Colin Thomas said his neighbour had water ‘‘just sneaking up under the door’’ on Wednesday morning.
‘‘By the time he put the towels there, it had all come through,’’ Thomas said. ‘‘He didn’t have time to get the [house] sand bagged. By the time he did what he did, it was too late.’’
Emma Hancock said she was shocked to see her garden flooded when she looked out her window on Tuesday night.
‘‘We went to sleep about 10pm and woke up about [10.45pm] and it [the water] was just there.’’
Gita’s downpour was worse than the flooding two weeks earlier. The water was lying stagnant around one side of her house, close to the front porch.
At the highest point of flooding in her yard, the water came to just below her knee. A lot of her plants and shrubs were under water.
Fellow Morse St resident Jimmy Neville said he noticed the water starting to fill up in his back yard about 8pm on Tuesday.