The Government and Wairoa District Council will investigate what can be done about the Wairoa River mouth, after the sand and gravel bar contributed to flooding in the township during the southerly storm and large swells yesterday morning.
Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell gave this assurance at a media conference in Wairoa today after visiting the area to survey damage.
More than 400 properties in Wairoa were flooded in torrential rain on Tuesday and Wednesday, with 116 houses sustaining significant damage.
The Wairoa River began subsiding following high tide at 8.45am yesterday, after reaching near Cyclone Bola levels and flooding more than 100 properties in the Kopu Rd and McLean St area – which was not flooded in Cyclone Gabrielle.
Mitchell said Wairoa was still in a local state of emergency but the floodwaters were starting to recede.
MetService lifted all weather warnings from Hawke’s Bay this morning.
Mayor Craig Little said he appreciated having Mitchell in town, and had also received a phone call from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
More than 400 assessments were carried out this morning, with 116 properties having flood damage of up to $150,000, Wairoa Civil Defence Emergency Operation Centre controller Juanita Savage said.
Floodwaters had made their way inside the properties and flooded carpets and walls.
The flood damage has compounded a housing crisis in Wairoa, which still has 200 homes in the North Clyde area, unaffected by yesterday’s flooding, that are unliveable after Cyclone Gabrielle.
“We’re in a huge crisis,” said Little. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us ... but we do it for our community and we’ll get there.”
Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) had used specialist water crews and drones to survey the flood-affected area.
Mitchell said he had released all the support he could as Emergency Management Minister but he would be updating Cabinet on Monday.
His message to the local area was: “You’re not on your own.”
Officials were on the ground gathering information that would affect whether the state of emergency was extended.
“It used to be quite a quiet place here,” joked Little.
At midday today, 22 people remained in Wairoa evacuation centres following the flooding. There had been no injuries from this latest weather event.
Fenz shift manager Allison Munn said a taskforce of crews specialised in water rescues was on the way to Wairoa to join Fenz Urban Search and Rescue teams on the ground.
The majority of Wairoa’s main-street businesses were not affected by flooding.
Wairoa Business Association chair Sue Wilson said the council learned its lesson from Cyclone Gabrielle about how to respond to weather events.
“People were prepared. I spoke to several businesses who were prepared. Even though there was a power outage, some of them got by.”
The state highways connecting Gisborne, Wairoa and Napier remained open today despite overnight rain, while SH38 from Frasertown to Lake Waikaremoana was still closed due to slips.
Mitchell was assessing damage in Hawke’s Bay, Wairoa and Tairāwhiti, where more than 200mm of rain had fallen within 24 hours in some places.
Police evacuated 200 people from their homes across Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti overnight Tuesday, Mitchell said.
“What aggravated the rain was that there was a 6-metre swell,” he said.
Hawke’s Bay Regional Council chair Hinewai Ormsby told RNZ today there was no doubt Wairoa would have flooded less if a channel to let the rising river release into the sea was dug sooner.
Decisions about opening the Wairoa bar were made on the best information available at the time, she said.
“The difficulty and the challenge, which has been longstanding, for the management of the Wairoa mouth opening has been the level in which the riverbed is at versus the swell and tide, and the timings and complexities around getting that right for the sake of human safety ... as well as it being successful to actually open it.
“To move one bucket of shingle and have it fill up with two just minutes later will not be a successful opening,” she said.
“But acknowledging that we do all agree that had it been opened sooner we wouldn’t have seen the devastation that we have in Wairoa.”
Contractor Hamish Pryde said crews had been put on notice to open the river mouth last Friday but the go-ahead was not given until mid-afternoon on Monday. His crew finished work in the dark on Tuesday.
They left two diggers and a bulldozer parked at a high point nearby where they had left machinery for the past 20-30 years.
When they returned yesterday they were flooded up to the top of their cabs.
The lagoon had no natural outlet to the sea and had essentially been controlled by humans since his father’s day, when it was dug out with horses and shovels, he said.
Ocean currents and waves constantly moved the gravel at the bar, causing it to prevent the river from draining properly.
Ormsby said the council would review its processes to see if the decision should have been made sooner.
- Reporting by Hawke's Bay Today and RNZ
