Long wait to re-enter flooded town
Hundreds of Edgecumbe evacuees queued yesterday, some for more than an hour, in an effort to get to their flood-stricken homes in the Bay of Plenty town.
Awakeri School, near the town’s guarded cordon, has become the hub of official efforts to allow residents whose homes are largely unaffected by flooding to retrieve some of their belongings.
A map posted at the school showed where the worst-hit homes were, as well as houses that had survived unscathed.
Many of the residents left their homes on Thursday morning with just the clothes on their backs.
About 1600 people were evacuated from more than 900 homes after the stopbanks along the Rangitaiki River burst following heavy rain.
At a heated town meeting on Saturday night, locals were told that residents whose homes were the least affected would be given the opportunity to visit their houses briefly, by escort, yesterday. By 9am, queues of people were backed up at the cordon – which has been manned around the clock by police and security – and at Awakeri School there were lengthy queues of people waiting to find out if they could go home.
Flood-ravaged Edgecumbe has no electricity, working sewerage systems or water and evacuees able to visit their homes were given 15 minutes to get some items and check on animals.
Evacuee Lotta Burke said she had made a list of things she wanted, including her passport and children’s toys. ‘‘It’s very stressful because I can’t provide for our family,’’ she said.
Burke said she wasn’t ‘‘a big worrier’’ and was grateful her family was OK but criticised the lack of communication from officials about their plans.
She walked out of a town meeting on Saturday night, along with hundreds of others, disappointed over explanations about the lack of flood alert.
Burke only knew to evacuate because she received a text from a friend whose daughter in London had seen the news and asked if Burke was OK.
‘‘People overseas knew before we did,’’ Burke said.
On Saturday, Whakatane District Council mayor Tony Bonne took his first tour through the town and witnessed the devastation himself. ‘‘I’m shocked, simple as that,’’ he said. ‘‘If it had happened during the night, there would have been deaths.’’
A stream of trucks have carted dirt from a local quarry to the new stopbank. Three diggers are in constant motion, swinging, spreading and packing the dirt.
‘‘Who would have thought we’d need dust masks after the other day,’’ Whakatane District Council chief executive Marty Grenfell said. The gap was plugged at 11pm on Friday, to much relief. Work resumed at dawn on Saturday.
A new stopbank, taller than the last, has turned the torrent into a trickle.
In the town, fences are uprooted and gardens are now ponds.
Household rubbish, barrels, and a small boat are strewn around the school playground.
While the floodwaters have receded from the river’s edge, further west it has pooled and it will take one or two weeks to get the water out, Bonne said.
It will be another week, at least, before residents can return to their broken town A new tropical cyclone forming in the Pacific is set to hammer island nations, and could bring more rain and flooding to New Zealand later this week. Cyclone Cook is tracking towards southern Vanuatu and New Caledonia, with forecasts of damaging winds and torrential rains. Weather Watch warned the cyclone could continue southeast to hit New Zealand with rains ‘‘heavy enough to cause even further serious flooding’’. Heavy rain was possible on Thursday and Friday, heading into Easter weekend, although Weather Watch added that the cyclone could ‘‘slip closely past’’ New Zealand without issues.
One person died in a single-seater light aircraft crash in the Waikato. The aircraft, believed to be a microlight or a gyrocopter, went down at Te Mapara, off State Highway 3, near Piopio, about 2.40pm yesterday.
A man has died in a collision between a bus and car on one of Hamilton’s central city bridges. The 55-year-old driver of the car died at the scene on the Anzac Parade bridge about 2.10pm on Saturday, despite frantic efforts to administer CPR. A young girl was a passenger in the car. There were no passengers in the bus at the time, and the driver was uninjured.
State Highway 1 south of Dunedin was closed for almost six hours after a crash left a woman dead and three others injured, including a toddler. The crash between a rental truck and a car happened near Waihola about 3.20pm on Saturday.