Residents take slip in stride
The residents of Riwaka Valley are ‘‘boxing on’’ as major slips block road access.
Ex-cyclone Gita’s wrath on Tuesday afternoon caused flooding and slips to Tasman areas, stranding tourists and locals.
Riwaka Valley Rd resident Len Youngman said many of the small slips down his road were ‘‘normal’’ during heavy rain.
The large slips were a different story. ‘‘I’ve been here 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like it.’’
As the road splits from Takaka Hill Highway to Riwaka Valley Rd, the top of the highway had fallen on to Riwaka Valley Rd. ‘‘That was all slip for about 300 metres.’’
He said the slip was so high you could stand on the peak and just about touch the power lines.
It looked like they would get access ‘‘to the outside world again’’ soon, he said.
‘‘I’ve been talking to people from Civil Defence, and we’ve had a few emails from the council. It looks like they’re on the ball and they’re going to get something done some time pretty soon.’’
Early estimates said there would be had a track through by the end of Thursday. Youngman said there had been ‘‘significant progress’’ made by yesterday but it was still not driveable.
‘‘There’s still quite significant water coming down the hill ... they’re having trouble getting the water off. They think by tonight they should have a 4WD access as least.’’
According to a Tasman District Council email, Riwaka Valley Rd is a local road so Downer would work on it, he said.
During floods in March 2016, Youngman lost 300 chickens he farmed for free range eggs.
This time, he was prepared, making sure his ‘‘menagerie’’ was safe, including geese, horses, chickens, dogs and cats.
‘‘We had our stock go down the river in 2016 so we certainly had them on higher ground.’’
He said he had a ‘‘mountain’’ of eggs piling up, unable to deliver the eggs. ‘‘I’ve got a friend who’s going in and out by helicopter just to Golden Bay so he’s going to drop in some supplies and take out some eggs.’’
Tourists trapped at the end of the road in the reserve were supplied eggs by Youngman.
He couldn’t say how many tourists were there but he had given them ‘‘about 15 dozen’’ eggs.
Along with the tourists, he was there were a number of families and couples who lived on the road who were ‘‘pretty much all in the same boat’’.
‘‘We’re liaising together. We’re used to being reasonably selfsufficient, it’s only been 36 hours so far, so not too many problems.’’
Youngman was ready for the excyclone which caused ‘‘very little damage’’ except for a bridge leading into their property.
He said there was no power to the house until 6.30pm Wednesday but a generator was kicked into action.
‘‘We have a lot of LED lighting, you’re pretty much bound to lose power. We’d been out and stocked up.’’
Youngman said the locals remained a tight community.
‘‘The council did offer to helicopter in supplies but I think the general feeling was they’d rather use the resources and those expensive things to do the work on the slip and we’ll look after each other.
‘‘There’s no misery here.’’