Safety with a smile as vital link reopens
"It’s vital to have that connectivity. We get a lot of products up from the Bay."
Taupo¯ Mayor David Trewavas
The cheery smile and wave of an Auckland office worker seconded to the Napier-taupo¯ highway seemed to be part of the strategy as the highway reopened to the public on Monday — five weeks after being closed by Cyclone Gabrielle.
It was a perfect early autumn morning, not a cloud in the sky, with grandmum Tracy Neho completing the picture as if her stop/go sign actually read: “Welcome to Sunny Hawke’s Bay”.
“I’m loving it,” said Neho, who was helping manage one-way traffic on a sealed lane built around a full-width highway drop-out between Te Po¯ hue and Eskdale, on the first day of the 7am-7pm openings through which traffic will be let this week, following four days of freight traffic last week.
It was, however, the end of one world and the beginning of another for the first motorists from Taupo¯ .
For more than 100km there was comparatively little evidence of Gabrielle’s nastiness, but then, there it was: about 20km of the devastation leading into the Esk Valley, most starkly the destroyed homes, ruined vehicles piled into the rubble and other odd places, the mangled stretch of the Napierwairoa railway line beside Munn’s Bridge, and the silt plains created as Esk River bottlenecked, dammed and burst, throwing everything it could at the valley in those horror hours of the morning of February 14.
At the Taupo¯ end, where I’d stopped for the night after a longway-around visit to the grandchildren in Hamilton, there were no queues waiting to hit the road, although motelier Carol Lin, at the Vu Thermal Lodge, had told me there were guests who were anxious about whether the road would be open in the morning.
There were more at the Napier end waiting to head north, but it was clear why national highways management agency Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and police would want people to take the utmost care in what is just the next stage of a very long reinstatement of the highway.
“While we’re all pleased that we can travel the road again, just like us, the road is still recovering from the recent devastating effects of Cyclone Gabrielle,” said Eastern police road policing manager Inspector Angela Hallet.
Temporary speed limits of 30km/h remain in place, and it’s well patrolled by police. We counted seven marked vehicles on the run home towards Napier.
The latest contingent of police from outside supporting the Eastern District staff in the ongoing crisis had arrived in Hawke’s Bay this week, several pressed into an immediate presence on State Highway 5.
Taupo¯ Mayor David Trewavas said the road opening reconnected many communities, from businesses to families.
“It’s vital to have that connectivity. We get a lot of products up from the Bay.
“A lot of parents here have children at the tertiary education facilities up there, so this will make life easier for them.”
He praised the hard work of NZTA Waka Kotahi and local contractors to get the road ready for traffic.