Bank collapses in backyard
New Plymouth’s Elsie Thomas has been left wondering how she will pay to clean up after a mountain of dirt came crashing down into her garden during the weekend’s wild weather.
On Saturday 56 millimetres of rain fell in New Plymouth, including 27mm in one hour, followed by a further 34mm on Sunday - causing a five metre high dirt bank and punga fence to collapse into Thomas’s Kenmore St garden.
‘‘I happened to be just out the back. I was going through some papers and there was an almighty thud and there was my bank,’’ Thomas said.
‘‘I rang up my son because I got the shakes.’’
Thomas said insurance wouldn’t cover the cost of removing the mess left after Sunday morning’s slip and she was now left wondering what to do.
‘‘I was just hoping that there wasn’t any more rain last night,’’ the 84-year-old said on Monday.
A concrete wall now sits on the edge of where the bank stood and Thomas has been told not to go into her backyard by firefighters who could do nothing to stabilise it.
‘‘You certainly wouldn’t want to be standing underneath it if it did come down,’’ Steve Dombroski, senior station officer New Plymouth fire brigade, said.
Thomas agreed she had a hard task ahead of her.
‘‘I’m not very happy, it’s a bit of a worry.’’
Meanwhile, New Plymouth District Council staff have been clearing debris from the Coastal Walkway and were checking the Huatoki and Te Henui walkways on Monday afternoon to see if any repairs were needed after the deluge, manager parks and open spaces, Stuart Robertson, said.
Robertson said Pukekura Park wasn’t affected by the heavy rain and council staff would also be assessing other parks and reserves in the district.
Taranaki Regional Council statistics showed it had been a very wet start to July for North Taranaki, while things got drier the further south you went.
Between the beginning of the month and 10am on Monday, New Plymouth’s Brooklands Zoo received 159mm of rain - 114 per cent of the average rainfall for the month - while only 13.2mm, 13 per cent, had fallen in Patea.
NIWA climate scientist Nava Fedaeff described Saturday’s deluge as an isolated weather system.
‘‘Because it happened over such a short time, that’s why you had the flash flooding,’’ Fedaeff said.
‘‘That’s what happens with extreme events, it’s not uncommon to get a month’s worth of rain or half a month’s worth of rain in one or two days.’’
Fedaeff said New Zealand had experienced plenty of extreme events during the last few months but this wasn’t uncommon.
‘‘It’s the wettest time of the year, so you are going to expect rain.’’
She said Taranaki could expect more rain from the middle of the week through until the weekend.
‘‘There’s another storm that’s going to be crossing New Zealand this week.’’
The region could expect near average rainfall through until the end of September, Fedaeff said, but just how it would accumulate was yet to be seen.
‘‘Obviously you could still get your extreme events but over all at the end of September we are expecting near normal rainfall for that period.
‘‘You can get to average in many ways; you can get it all at once or spread out.’’
Craig Pickford, Taranaki Regional Council team leader hydrology, said the weekend’s rain was experienced on a yearly basis, although not always in July. Triston Gray and Aimee Warren might just have to get used to flood water rising up and running under their house because a solution to stop it could cost millions.
A little over a week ago, after a period of heavy rain, their Makere St home in Waitara was flooded for the second time in two years.
Their’s wasn’t the only house in Waitara to be flooded by the heavy rain. A house in Pukekohatu St was flooded as were parts of Stafford St.
Warren said on July 3 water came under their house to within two inches of their floorboards and, after calling the fire brigade, they were told if the rain continued they would have to be evacuated.
‘‘We weren’t scared. It was more the fact we’ve got little kids and we’d have to lift them over our heads to get out.’’
The water around the house came to the top of the firefighter’s thighs, she said.
Five days later there was still water under their house making their home quite damp.
‘‘We’ve been running two big dehumidifiers full time all week.’’
Gray said it was the second time in the two years they had lived at the property that it had flooded and everything in the garden shed, including the lawn mower, was wrecked. Again.
‘‘Something needs to be done about it. We’re the lowest house in the street and the water directly comes into us.
‘‘It’s a torrent that though. It’s ridiculous.’’
They called the New Plymouth comes District Council and were told it wasn’t the council’s problem, because the land behind their house didn’t belong to the council, Gray said.
‘‘They try and blame it on everyone else.’’
New Plymouth District Council infrastructure manager David Langford said council staff had met with residents from the area following the flooding.
‘‘Because of the low lying topography of the area Makere St is flood prone,’’ he said.
‘‘We helped to clear up some of the debris and mud which had washed onto the road from last Monday.
‘‘We’ve been talking with residents about solutions and we plan to install some improvements to the stormwater system such as road sumps to get the water away more quickly.’’
Langford said discussions were also going on between council and a neighbouring land owner to install a larger drain across private land.
‘‘There’s a lot of planning work to do to find engineering solutions for the catchment at Waitara and we are in the process of working through these, some of which are subject to affordability.’’
Some projects could cost ‘‘several million dollars’’, he said.