Deadly downpour: Homes flooded,
As the multi-million dollar clean-up continues in disaster-hit Auckland, questions continue to plague officials about why they fell silent when the chaos was just beginning. Glenn McConnell and report.
It was 9.27pm on Friday when Auckland mayor Wayne Brown declared the city’s emergency responders were overwhelmed.
By this point, Aucklanders had been fleeing their flooded homes for hours, roads had become rivers, and at least one person had died.
The city had experienced the most severe rainstorm in its recorded history, with MetService reporting up to 320mm of rainfall that night – about four months of rain in just a few hours.
The downpour was sudden. There had been rain warnings but nothing to prepare Auckland for what happened. West Aucklanders, caught by surprise, were forced to start evacuating from 4pm. When rush hour arrived, the motorways were underwater.
Council emergency response authorities began discussing declaring a state of emergency some time between 5 and 6pm. And then at about 7.20pm, a body was found in Wairau Valley – one of the city’s hardest-hit suburbs.
Two hours later, Auckland Emergency Management controller Andrew Clark said he told Brown he needed to declare a state of emergency. First responders were struggling to get people to evacuate homes. He told Brown emergency services were stretched, and high tide was approaching.
‘‘Within two minutes’’ of being told of the situation,
Brown said he declared a local state of emergency. While the paperwork was signed, it wouldn’t be until 10.18pm that the Mayor’s Office told the public that a state of emergency had been declared.
In Ranui, West Auckland, the scale of the emergency was clear to Manmeet Malhotra as soon as she got home just before 5pm. The water was already chestdeep and council wheelie bins were floating by. She said some of the people in her neighbourhood refused to leave their homes, despite repeated pleas from emergency responders.
‘‘There was a lot of talking: ‘Go, go, water is here now’ . . . I had to drag them, to convince them . . . they’re very attached to the house.’’
She said had an official emergency been declared earlier, extracting reluctant people from their homes may have been easier.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins visited Malhotra on Saturday. He saw piles of mud-covered furniture sitting roadside, and Malhotra’s sodden floorboards. She hadn’t had time to save all her valuables, because she had to help vulnerable neighbours, including a pregnant woman and the local kindergarten, evacuate.
The floodwaters consumed some of her most treasured family photos, irreplaceable ones shot on film of her grandparents.
‘‘At the time, I was just helping. My brain was thinking, ‘bring that child, bring that child’,’’ she recalled. ‘‘They needed help. They were yelling out. Every little scream we hear, if someone’s floating in the water, we had to make sure it was just a rubbish bin floating by and not a child.’’
Emergency services were able to reach Malhotra, but this was just the start. The torrential rain spread across the Auckland region.
Late yesterday, hundreds of exhausted travellers stuck at Auckland Airport faced another night with nowhere to go, as the resumpton of international flights kept getting pushed back.
And with the wild weather widespread, the NZ Transport Agency was reporting road
closures in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Gisborne.
In Waitomo, a state of emergency was declared after widespread flooding and heavy rain.
Waitomo mayor John Robertson said residents were being evacuated.
‘‘The situation in Waitomo is serious, and with nightfall upon us and more rain expected, it’s important we are prepared and have the right controls in place to provide help and support, including further evacuations.’’
In worst-hit Auckland, there was still no estimate late yesterday of how many homes had been evacuated;
Government and businesses said it was also too soon to count the cost of damage. But business leaders said it would be in the ‘‘many millions’’.
There were warnings of more bad weather today.
The Government announced an immediate cash injection of $100,000 but the clean-up bill is likely to be much more.
Hipkins said the first responsibility for dealing with a local emergency was the council’s and local teams. He said the Government was ready and waiting to support local authorities where needed, and when asked.
‘‘This is an unprecedented event in recent memory. In the aftermath, we will have plenty of time to evaluate the response and ensure that all appropriate actions and communications have occurred in a timely way,’’ Hipkins said. ‘‘But for now our focus is on making sure we support Aucklanders.’’
Brown hit back at suggestions that Auckland was left leaderless as water swept through the city. He said he had been at his desk since 4pm and stayed late into the night.
Councillors, including Maungakiekie-Tā maki ward representative Josephine Bartley, had urged Brown to declare a state of emergency earlier. She said emergency services had been unable to reach those stranded in areas such as South Auckland, where the rain had settled in later that evening. She said many families were at home, unaware of the severity of the storm – and that they may need to evacuate.
In Mā ngere, the floodwaters rose rapidly – cutting off much of the town. Around the same time, Brown said he officially declared a state of emergency, well before telling the public he’d done so. The residents of Mā ngere had become DIY search and rescuers.
An elderly man was seen being stretchered down Bader Drive atop a floating air bed to emergency services, which were waiting on higher ground.
Neighbours and police were seen braving the floodwaters, wading through to homes which were either underwater or inaccessible by cars.
Auckland emergency management controller Andrew Clark said it only became apparent when the downpours intensified that emergency workers needed extra powers and declaring an emergency was necessary.
‘‘The powers that they needed were police powers, to be able to evacuate people from their homes, who appeared reluctant to leave their homes, [where] there was a health and safety situation.’’
It would also give special powers to defence force staff. The fact that no state of emergency had been called did not stop Fire and Emergency calling on the Air Force at nearby Whenuapai for help and at least one large military truck and the base’s fire truck pitched in to help.
Transport Minister Michael Wood, who was at home in Mt Roskill on Friday night, said it was obvious by ‘‘mid-evening’’ that this was an emergency. ‘‘It became clear this was a very serious event,’’ he said.
By mid-evening, he said the nearby creek had flooded to the highest level he’d ever seen.
‘At 9pm, Wood went online to tell staff at Waka Kotahi that they needed to get back to work. Its media team had logged off about 7.30pm, but he said it was clear that Aucklanders needed updates on what was happening on the roads.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon also took to social media, urging Brown to declare a state of emergency at 9.55pm. It wasn’t until late on Saturday afternoon that Luxon and the public discovered, during Brown’s press conference, that a state of emergency had already been declared. The mayor just hadn’t publicised his declaration.
‘‘We need a proper dispassionate review, to say where could things have been done better? It was a fast-moving event,’’ Luxon said on Saturday.
In the end, one of Brown’s minders gripped him by the elbow and removed him, guiding him away from reporters.
Sunday News asked why it took almost an hour to tell Auckland it was in a state of emergency, but he continued walking out the back door.