Badly hit supermarket rallies and reopens
Auckland’s largest Pak’nSave supermarket, submerged in knee-deep floodwater last week that trapped about 80 people, will reopen this morning.
The week-long clean-up included removing truckloads of contaminated food, replacing all shelving and cabling in the 5700sq m store and lifting check-outs to sanitise them.
“The damage was significant,” Pak’nSave Wairau Park owner-operator Quintin Proctor said.
“The store had been steeped in kneedeep water. Anything the floodwater had touched we had to write off. Every piece of machinery was damaged — ovens, fridges, all gone. It was just devastating.”
After a call from the duty manager, Proctor struggled to get to his flooded supermarket on Friday evening as the surrounding roads were submerged and blocked, he said. “It was chaos out there.”
When he arrived, the power was flicking on and off and 80 people were trapped upstairs above the shop floor.
He said he and his electrician waded through the water to switch the power off and he walked the customers and staff out, following a chain in the middle of the store.
Proctor said it was humbling to see how his team rallied during the emergency, and the support following the flood was phenomenal.
“There’s been hundreds of people coming through this business to put it back together.
“There’s people out there that I know will be suffering as well. So, when we open the doors, we’re going to go hard like we normally do. We’re going to go hard on price and over-deliver to our community.”
Other Auckland supermarkets owned by Foodstuffs North Island were damaged in the deluge, including New World Fresh Collective Alberton in Mt Albert, which was still closed yesterday.