‘Our street was a lake’
Doug and Julz Chappel tried bucketing the water out of their sump to stop their home flooding.
But the Hamilton couple couldn’t keep up as the downpour intensified, sending a deluge through their Glamis Ave home on Sunday.
‘‘We were getting smashed,’’ Julz Chappel said as her and husband Doug assessed the damage of their Dinsdale home yesterday.
‘‘We tried stopping it, then all of a sudden it was out of control.’’
Torrential rain caused flash flooding across the Dinsdale suburb on Sunday with a total of 24 people in seven homes needing to be evacuated.
Hamilton City Council incident response controller Andre Chatfield said all evacuated residents were expected to be able to return to their properties today, subject to final property assessments.
An estimated 40mm of rain fell in under an hour in what Chatfield said was a ‘‘highly unusual’’ event.
‘‘Staff on site have said they have never seen this amount of rain in one area in such a short time,’’ Chatfield said yesterday .
The rainfall was ‘‘massive’’, with the main downpour lasting 45 minutes.
Council staff arranged temporary accommodation for four evacuated families.
‘‘Our priority at the moment is ensuring these families, and three other families who were also evacuated, are looked after while our teams assess the impact of the rain, and subsequent flooding, on their homes.’’
Power was turned off to the properties as a precaution during the flooding and electrical assessments were being done as part of the safety checks. Torrential downpours hit around 2pm – not long after the Chappels arrived home.
The day before they’d been enjoying 36 degree weather on the Gold Coast of Australia.
‘‘We were having a bite to eat and we saw the rain coming in so we pulled the washing off the line,’’ Doug Chappel said.
‘‘I looked out the window and I could see the water pooling.’’
Chappel headed downstairs to the garage. The floor was dry so he opened the garage door.
Within minutes a deluge engulfed the bottom storey, seeping into the laundry and filling the storage room. Initially it was ankle deep but eventually it was everywhere – all sorts of things were floating through the garage.
‘‘It’s gone up about two or three stairs, into the carpet and storage area.’’ Heavy rain had blown the manhole on Glamis Ave inundating the street. ‘‘Our street was just a lake, and Whatawhata Rd was worse.’’