Video: Twyford fruit grower recounts devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle
Jerf van Beek’s voice cracks with emotion as he surveys the devastation to his orchards and home caused by Cyclone Gabrielle earlier this week.
Van Beek, a Twyford fruit grower and Hawke’s Bay Regional Councillor, suffered major losses to his orchards and extensive damage to his home as a flood bank at his property was overwhelmed by a torrent of “angry” water from the nearby Ngaruroro River.
Of his 14 hectares of fruit, three hectares of cherries are okay, but all his apple trees have either fallen over or been washed away. Apples and other fruit lie abandoned on the ground, with some still stuck in roadside fences where the force of the flood waters pushed them. The track leading up to Van Beek’s house is covered in thick mud and sludge, a reminder of the raging torrent that was there a few days ago.
“Eleven hectares are completely destroyed. It will take three years to rebuild and that is a cost of about $180,000 to $250,000 per hectare. I don’t have that sort of money in the bank, so that is where the help will be needed,” says Van Beek.
“I’m still working on adrenaline. This morning my wife and I had a bit of a cry. It was tough to see my wife being hurt. It is not what I live for. All you see is a life’s work, we have a beautiful home and it is completely destroyed.”
“There will be times that we will be really sad by this, but we have faith in our people, and we have our own faith.”
“We believe we will come out of this really well and on Sunday we will go to church, and we will have a lot of family around us and we will sing His praises.”
He also acknowledged that there are “people worse off than we are”.
When the flooding started, Van Beek and his family had minutes in which to grab some essentials and rush to their vehicles, with the water seeping in as they drove away. They stopped to warn a neighbour who raced inside to get some items, by which time her vehicle was “a write-off”. She was rescued by four-wheel drive tractor shortly afterwards.
Jerf van Beek pictured outside his property in Twyford, which has been devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo/Hawke's Bay App.
Speaking of the moment the water came, Van Beek said: “We were at our backdoor and we were just going to get something out of our shed that we wanted to keep dry.”
“We looked and we saw forceful water coming down this drive here and we knew that was not surface water, that was with force, that was angry water.”
“By the time we got into our cars, the water was up to the floorboards, and we just raced out
With his house uninhabitable, Van Beek and his wife are staying with family nearby.
Asked if there was anything that could have been done to prepare for the Cyclone, Van Beek said the stock bank, which had been raised a metre after Cyclone Bola, had not broken.
“It went over the top. That's how big this was. And across in Korokipo Road, that's where it broke. If that didn’t happen, I don't think we would've been busy with our house.”
He estimates that the cost to the industry will be hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We can come back but we need the support because we don't have hundreds of millions in our bank accounts to be able to do that.”
Van Beek believes the Government should offer “$100 million, $200 million” in financial support to the industry.
“This is not just our homes, it's our productive Hawke's Bay industry, it's the jobs. Like I said before, $1 earned on an orchard is $4 received or earned in town. It's got a one to four return... Like the pack houses, the cardboard, the truck drivers, the forklift drivers, and the carpenters and the plumbers. Everybody does well when we do well as an industry. That's what Hawke's Bay is built on. And that's why it's so important.”
Van Beek says while he was focused on his situation at present, he was keeping in contact with the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council.
“We as a council now need to focus on A, getting all the water out, keeping people safe. And secondly, we need to start to look at what will the future look like? What can we do to keep our community safe so that we actually have a place where we feel safe and where we actually can be prosperous.”
“That to me is the most important thing. So that one message that I need to get out from a councillor perspective. “That's what we need to do.”
