Cyclone Gabrielle devastates New Zealand’s North Island as minister says ‘this is climate change’
New Zealand’s government has declared a national state of emergency, as Cyclone Gabrielle continues to batter the country, with floods trapping people on roofs and landslides destroying homes in what officials have described as an “unprecedented” natural disaster.
The country announced a national state of emergency on Tuesday as the scale of damage inflicted by the storm emerged.
The emergency management minister, Kieran McAnulty said Gabrielle was “an unprecedented weather event” and was “having major impacts across much of the North Island”.
It is only the third time in New Zealand’s history that a national state of emergency has been declared. The designation means that the national government can send resources across the country to bolster civil defence efforts.
With a number of regions completely cut off from access or telecommunications on Tuesday, assessing the extent of the damage was proving extremely difficult, and there were no formal numbers so far on numbers of people displaced, evacuated or injured, or homes destroyed.
“It will take us a while to get a handle on exactly what’s happened,” the prime minister, Chris Hipkins, said on Tuesday morning. “A lot of families displaced, a lot of homes without power, extensive damage done across the country.”
He said recovery from the storm’s damage was likely to be lengthy, with many people displaced. “This won’t be an overnight recovery. It’s going to take a while – some people will be displaced from their homes for an extended period of time,” Hipkins said.
The cyclone comes on the heels of devastating flooding in Auckland and Northland, which caused extensive damage a fortnight earlier.
The climate change minister, James Shaw, said of the cyclone’s devastating effects: “This is climate change.
“The impacts will get worse unless we act now to cut emissions quickly and adapt communities for the effects already here.”
The prime minister indicated the cyclone – and other extreme weather events – would have to change how and where New Zealand builds its communities.
“We need to look at the sustainability of some of the places where we have built previously,” he said. “We’ve got a long history of poor past decisions in New Zealand that we’re confronting right now.”
The worst-affected areas appeared to be around the east coast and far north of the North Island. Some communities, such as the coastal region of Gisborne/Tairāwhiti, have been cut off entirely, lacking power, mobile networks or road access. Fire and Emergency New Zealand said it had lost all communication with crews on the ground in the early hours of Tuesday morning, while Civil Defence workers were communicating by satellite phone.
Flood waters rose to envelop homes and buildings in some areas: in Hastings, some people sheltered on roofs. Landslides around Auckland’s west coast swept away homes and cut off roads.
McAnulty said that while “we are through the worst of the storm itself, we are all facing extensive flooding slips, damaged roads and infrastructure”.
“Our message to everyone affected is safety first: look after each other, your family and your neighbours,” he said. If people were facing dangerous conditions, he urged them to proactively evacuate: “If you are worried about your safety, particularly because of the threat of flooding or slips, then don’t wait for emergency services to contact you: leave and seek safety.”
By Tuesday afternoon, power was cut off to 225,000 people across the North Island, the energy minister, Megan Woods, said. The national grid operator warned that power might not be restored to some for “for days to weeks, rather than hours”.
The National Emergency Management Agency’s national manager of operations, Roger Ball, said: “The situation is really evolving minute by minute. We’ve got self-evacuations at the moment and formal evacuations under way.”
He said some evacuations were now being conducted by the New Zealand defence force.
The conditions were making evacuations and rescues difficult. One firefighter was in a critical condition and another still missing after a landslide destroyed the house that they were inspecting in Muriwai, west Auckland.
McAnulty said emergency workers were struggling with access in a number of regions across the North Island. “The unstable ground, the flood waters, closed roads [are] making their job incredibly difficult. The options that would be available to them normally, such as helicopters, may not be possible with the extent of the weather,” he said.