Linger until tomorrow
Teenager cool-headed in river rescue
One house in Whitianga was blown apart in winds the town’s fire chief said were the worst he’d ever encountered.
Merv George said a woman was given “one hell of a scare” when the roof of her Wharekaho Rd home was blown off and the front of the home blown in shortly after 3am.
The home, which Mr George said was like a converted garage, had been damaged so badly he doubted it could be saved.
The woman was unhurt but was forced to take refuge with neighbours.
“I’ve never seen wind like it before — you couldn’t walk against it at times,” said Mr George, a long-time Whitianga resident.
In another case, a street had to be closed because of flying 6m pieces of roof iron, some of which were found wrapped around trees.
One of Mr George’s fire crew earned the nickname “tumbleweed” after he was knocked from his feet and bowled along the street while trying to collect the helmet that had blown off his head.
Between 2am and 8.30am, his crew attended 15 callouts. “The boys and girls worked really hard.” Two brothers had a narrow escape after a tree crashed down just centimetres from their bedroom.
Just after 3.30am two large pines fell on a home in Blockhouse Bay, causing extensive damage.
“One took out the garage and my car,” said the boys’ mother, Sarah Thompson, 34. “The other one smashed on the top of the roof and just narrowly missed my kids’ bedrooms by a few centimetres.”
Ms Thompson feels very lucky her sons, aged 7 and 9, were not hurt.
She said she had stayed up all night because of the wild winds, and heard the trees crash. “I heard the first crack just after 3, and a couple more cracks and then a big smash.”
Her sons were initially “freaked out” but as day broke they were overcome with a spirit of adventure.
“They were excitedly walking around the property looking at all the damage, and they thought it was pretty cool, because they’d have some stories to write about at school.”
The main structure of the house was undamaged, and contractors were working to remove the trees. Dennis Hawnt of Whangaparaoa woke to find a large tree had crashed through his garage and sleepout.
Mr Hawnt said he woke just after midnight and found that power in his Arkles Bay home was off.
“I went outside and saw the tree had fallen on the garage and the sleepout, but it was good because nobody was in the building at the time.”
A local fire brigade was in the area and came to assess the damages.
“It’s quite lucky that it didn’t land in a more inconvenient place, like on one of the cars or on the house.” When Marlborough Boys’ College head boy Angus Pauley saw a young girl being swept away by a flooded Blenheim river, he told his mother Helen to stop the car. Then he ran to the High St bridge and shouted to the girl in the raging Taylor River to ask if she was okay.
“She just yelled back, ‘I need my mum’,” the 17-year-old told Newstalk ZB, hours after the river rescue yesterday.
Police have praised the teenager for saving the 12-year-old girl, who had been walking to school.
Angus’ mother phoned emergency services and he ran to the river’s edge and stripped to his underwear before running alongside the girl. She disappeared under the water but local multisport champion Jeremy McKenzie arrived and ran down the bank.
“I said to him ‘If I go in, will you be able to help me?’ and he gave me the nod,” Angus said.
He swam to the girl who was swallowing water and screaming. He dragged her over to the riverside where Mr McKenzie was. The fastflowing current made it difficult to get out of the river but they eventually got the girl to the bank, then the road, where the police took control.
The girl was taken to Wairau Hospital where she was treated for hypothermia. Mr Pauley was also treated for mild hypothermia, but it was “nothing serious”.
Mr Hawnt said he would seek advice from his insurance company before removing the tree. When Brenda Sweeney heard a bang outside as she lay in bed, she didn’t think to check the swimming pool.
It wasn’t until she got up the next morning and a neighbour on Mairangi Bay’s East Coast Rd asked her if she had checked her backyard that she realised her trampoline had jumped into her 6m swimming pool (pictured above).
The grandmother checked her fence when she was woken by the noise about 2.30am yesterday, but went back to sleep when she saw it was still standing.
“I didn’t even think to check the pool . . . nothing else could have fitted into it, the trampoline took up all the room.”
She asked a builder if he would come and take it out but was told he may not be able to arrive for up to two weeks. She tried fire stations on the North Shore but they were too busy with other callouts. One told her to call the northern fire communications centre, which organises the region’s callouts.
“Within two minutes, three burly firefighters arrived to help,” Ms Sweeney said. “From now on, I will buy a Fire Service calendar every year.” A water tank was all that stood between a falling gum tree and a mother and daughter on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula.
Robyn Whittaker and her daughter were sleeping in their bedroom when a 15m tree crashed on to the roof of their Manly home just before 2am.
“We just heard an almighty noise and basically a big gum tree had come from the property just up on the hill . . . straight down — and on to our house,” Ms Whittaker said.
“I was in the bed right under it with my young daughter because she’d got up because of the noise of the storm.”
Had the tree not first crashed into the water tank behind their house, it might have come straight through into their bedroom, she said.
“It was a huge tree; enormous, and very heavy,” she said. “So the water tank stopped all the weight from coming down on to the house.”
Most of the tree is now off the house, but the roof and water system were extensively damaged.
Just 200m up the road, a 14-yearold was taken to hospital with minor injuries yesterday morning after another gum tree crashed through the roof of a house.