THUMBS UP & DOWN

■ Thumbs up: to the men and women who provide in-home care in our community. You are very much appreciated.

■ Thumbs up: to Water wise and the work they are doing.

■ Thumbs up: to Chris from Unichem Pharmacy Waipukurau, always happy, helpful, thoughtful and always going the extra mile, you're so appreciated Chris.

■ Thumbs up: to families at Omakere for banding together to clean up the flooded hall and playcentre after the flooding. What a fantastic community we live in that band together in times of need.

■ Thumbs up: to my colleague Nici Baldwin — Covid testing team — doing so much to serve the community in these times.

■ Thumbs up: to the guys from Centralines for keeping our power on and working hard during the storm.

■ Thumbs up: to my lovely neighbour who came to ensure we were aware of the boil water notice. You also checked on our other neighbours too. Your kindness and concern is greatly appreciated

■ Thumbs up: to my beautiful Covid testing team — who were still out there sorting RATs and Covid stuff in their gumboots absolutely saturated from head to toe.

■ Thumbs up: to the Central Hawke's Bay District Council and Central Fm for keeping us all well informed and up to date with any new flooding information last week.

■ Thumbs up: to Dr Jane Nash who gave us her full support regardless of how crazy busy she was. People matter to her.

■ Thumbs down: to all the people who speed through Ongaonga. Slow down! Our village is full of kids and elderly people. It's a beautiful place, why not slow down and enjoy the view?

■ Thumbs down: to whoever decided to fix a water leak late at night. It had been there all week. 8pm Saturday night you arrive. 10pm there are diggers, lights flashing. Very noisy, there's no way anyone could sleep with that noise. 11pm you leave. Grateful to have water, but surely it would have made sense to fix it during the day.

■ Thumbs down: to the locals who have tested positive for Covid19 but are still going to local businesses and not isolating. Very disappointing.

■ Thumbs down: to the people in cars and mostly 4WDs that went down onto the recreational areas at the river, after the floods, and tore up what remained of the grass and the walking and horse trails by doing skids and making mud holes. Those areas are for walkers and cyclists and horse riders. We had already lost enough in the floods.

■ Thumbs down: to NZTA. SH2 is a moonscape with craters and pot holes big enough to require scaffolding to get across. Not to mention loose chip from the appalling reseal attempt near Otane.