Surviving Gita
NZ faces massive clean-up
Hundreds of people are in clean-up mode two days on from Cyclone Gita’s ravaging visit that damaged roads, houses and completely cut off access to parts of the West Coast and Golden Bay districts.
Seven districts declared a state of emergency under the force of the storm which caused landslides that blocked arterial roads, toppled power lines and damaged water infrastructure.
Yesterday states of emergency in Christchurch City, Buller, Grey, Selwyn and Westland districts were lifted but remained in place for Nelson and New Plymouth districts.
Damage from the cyclone to State Highway 1 along the southern Kapiti Coast, one of the main routes to the capital, saw it reduced to one lane.
The damage threatened the road’s stability, with barriers and a seawall torn down in the stormy sea swells that hit late on Tuesday and early yesterday.
Emergency repairs were under It was when the mud started to come into their home that they knew they needed to leave.
Trevor, 72, and Val A’Court, 63, have lived in their Riwaka home north of Nelson for over 10 years. But they’ve never seen anything like the damage wreaked by Cyclone Gita.
First the orchard next door started to flood, then the creek behind their house started to rise.
Finally, it burst its banks with a power that swept away the bridge, and sent mud and silt through their garden and into their home.
“Huge logs were coming through and hitting the bridge, and . . . moving it quite a distance,” Trevor said.
“So we [were] just hoping it wouldn’t come into the house.
“But just at that time, the rain got considerably heavier . . . and all of a sudden everything just rose up.
“It was literally a matter of probably 20 minutes. We were looking okay, and then it started to come in the house. I looked out the window at the road in front of the house, and it was just a river.
“Big logs were hitting the side of our house, and for a while I thought ‘oh dear, the house is going to come off the piles’.”
The power of the floodwater has left pine logs and entire trees piled up around the Nelson Tasman region, ripped from the ground and left piled against homes, bridges, and across roads.
Multiple major slips can be seen on the surrounding hills, including several slips blocking the Takaka Hill road.
It’s expected to be several days until that route is cleared for a single lane. Golden Bay residents are cut off until then.
Val A’Court said that by the time
HFor videos of damage caused by Gita got to nzherald.co.nz they knew they needed to evacuate from Gita’s fury, it wasn’t safe for them to go outside anymore.
But the water was already creeping into their home.
“This was a river [on the road in front and behind their house].
“So we just had to wait for the fire brigade to come and get us”.
When they came back in the morning they saw mud a foot thick blanketing the prized garden, and mud an inch high through the house.
The community quickly rallied around, taking turns visiting each others’ homes to scrape away mud, hose down walls and pile muddy furniture outside.
Despite that, Val and Trevor said they “couldn’t imagine” how long it will take to get their house back to normal. “Months, I think,” said Trevor.