Picking up pieces after the big wet
Four days after their home was turned into a fishbowl, amother and daughter are adjusting to life in amotel in a different city.
Juanita MacDonald and Shinelia, 17, have been living out of a suitcase in Lower Hutt after their rental in Plimmerton was submerged in a flash flood on Sunday.
A torrential downpour deposited half a month’s rainfall in 12 hours, causing the worst flooding seen in the northern Porirua suburb in a quarter of a century.
Speaking from her motel room, MacDonald said they were starting again for the second time, having returned to New Zealand from Australia after separating from her partner three years ago.
Uninsured, their possessions are sodden and covered in silt and mud, and the house they called home for 21⁄2 years ‘‘won’t be liveable for months’’.
Adding insult to injury, they have to travel between cities each day to sort through their belongings because there are no motel rooms available in Porirua.
MacDonald did not know where they were going to go when their week at the motel was up.
She feared more disruption to their lives if she and her daughter had to leave the area.
‘‘With the [housing] market the way it is – as a single mother competing with families with two incomes, it looks like we’re going to have to move away to be able to afford anything.’’
Lastmonth, Porirua became the most expensive place in the country to rent at $625 a week. Average weekly rent in the city out-stripped the $600 charged on Auckland’s North Shore and in Wellington. The average national weekly rent price is $510.
MacDonald says the floodwater came up quickly.
Timestamps from videos sent to her and Shinelia show there was surface flooding outside her Airlie Rd rental at 9.29am. By 9.38am ‘‘there was water coming in from all directions’’.
MacDonald could see water building up against the ranchslider.
‘‘I thought ‘I need to get out’. I packed a little suitcase with a change of clothes and our passports.
‘‘I opened the door and [the water] came surging in up to my knees. The fridge was floating up across the kitchen.’’
MacDonald said the silver lining in the situation was the response from friends and the community. Within hours, they had a couch to sleep on, a car to use and people they’d never met offering to help clear out the house.
A Givealittle page has also been set up to help them get back on their feet. Over $3500 had been raised.
‘‘I opened the door and [the water] came surging in up to my knees. The fridge was floating up across the kitchen.’’ Juanita MacDonald