Wet rescue as storm causes havoc
A good samaritan came to the rescue of two sparkies caught in ‘‘waist-deep’’ floodwaters in Coromandel as severe weather arrived for most of the country yesterday.
Shawn Beer was driving along SH25 near Pauanui – just before the road closed – when he saw the van stuck in floodwater and pulled the two passengers out.
Slips and flooding covered much of the Coromandel as the region experienced up to 170mm of rainfall.
Beer was on his way to Auckland to pick up his 14-year-old child from the airport when he saw the vehicle stuck in the middle of the road.
The two electricians had flooded their engine.
While every other car driving past didn’t want to take the risk, Beer said he knew it would be easy in his landcruiser. ‘‘I didn’t have any rope on me, but luckily there was a garage just up the road. I bought some rope headed back, and it was a piece of cake pulling them. It wasn’t a big deal.’’
Meanwhile, 11 South Island roads closed yesterday because of snow, flooding, downed power lines and high winds.
On the West Coast, Lynn Brooks, chief fire officer at Waimangaroa station, said they had been called to about half a dozen weather-related jobs by yesterday afternoon.
The calls were mainly because of wind damage, including two houses that had ‘‘completely lost their roofs’’, Brooks said.
Civil Defence West Coast regional director Claire Brown said power outages in the region would continue into yesterday evening.
In Wellington, 19 flights had been cancelled yesterday because of weather and staffing issues. ‘‘The weather is bad across the country so, unfortunately, we are expecting further disruptions,’’ Phil Rennie, of Wellington Airport, said.