‘You’ve gotta laugh, or you’ll cry’
As the floodwaters recede and the cleanup begins, there were tears and cheers as Westport evacuees were finally allowed back into their waterlogged homes.
West Coast-Tasman MP Damien O’Connor told The Press yesterday it was likely about 200 houses in the Buller District had been left uninhabitable, after the weekend’s code red rain-induced flooding.
At its peak nearly half of the town’s population was evacuated from their homes, and while many had started to return, they were often going back to catastrophic damage and destroyed belongings.
Daniel Beveridge and his flatmates got about half a metre of water through their place, in the north end of Westport. But the group was trying to keep it light.
‘‘My couch met me in the kitchen yesterday morning,’’ Beveridge said. ‘‘The oven’s still got a bit of soup in it ... probably cold by now’’, he said, as he pulled out a warming drawer full of brown water. The whole house is swimming, really.’’
The flatmates had moved most of their ruined furniture to the front lawn by mid- yesterday. But Beveridge said there was a pensioner’s flat out the back, and it had been hit even harder.
‘‘There’s an obvious tide line the whole way through his house. It was over the toilet seat.
‘‘We feel bloody sorry for him really. He’s staying with friends.’’
Out the back of their flat was a garage where the boys worked on cars. Engines were left filled with an oil-water blend, and their mechanic’s pit was ‘‘probably only useful as a swimming pool at the moment’’.
Beveridge said it would take months of work to make their flat liveable again, but they were trying to stay positive.
‘‘You’ve got to laugh about it, or you’ll f...ing cry.’’
Around the corner on Bright St, teacher Lisa Dent and her family had arrived home, to discover their house had narrowly escaped the flooding.
But their garage, and a number of self-contained units out the back, had suffered some pretty serious damage.
She and her family spent yesterday hauling out sodden furniture, and removing doors, so drenched carpet could be pulled out more easily.
Dent said she had been away from home, but had been videocalling her children as the floodwaters rose across the street.
‘‘They didn’t actually get evacuated. I just said, ‘you need to leave’. The water [outside] was up to their knees in 20 minutes.
‘‘It was lapping at the front and back doors.’’
The family had seen sewage ‘‘bubbling out’’ down the street, so Dent said it was now a matter of people staying safe and healthy as they cleaned out what was left of their homes.
‘‘Others are worse off, I’d say. We’re just lucky we have somewhere safe and dry to stay.
‘‘Although, it might be a bit cramped with seven of us in there.’’ Buller Emergency Management advised returnees to use personal protective equipment if they were handling items that had been in contact with flood water, and urged them to treat all flood water as contaminated.
They said perishable food items could be left on the curbside for collection on Monday in sealed plastic bags.
‘‘Please keep other waste items on your property ready for collection later this week.’’
The rubbish transfer station would be open from 9am to 4pm today.