Video: Devastation, heartbreak and tears in Cyclone-hit Wairoa
Devastation, heartbreak and tears is how the Mayor of Wairoa has described the destruction wrought on his district and town by Cyclone Gabrielle.
Speaking to Hawke’s Bay App via video link this week, Little reflected that the region had been in a “bad place”.
“We suffered all over the county really, but mainly in town. We had about 250 houses that had silt come. The river burst its banks and that's been a devastation for us, is getting all these people out of their homes. It's just devastation, heartbreak, and tears.”
Little says that the main issue was that from day one there was no power, no communications and State Highway two and State Highway 38 were not accessible.
“We were completely blocked in. No communications to the outside world, so we were pretty lonely at that stage. And then we started hearing that the river had burst its banks, and luckily a couple of farmers had picked up on it and they started rushing out people in their trailers.”
“That was a godsend. Otherwise, we probably would've lost a lot of people. And if it had been at night-time, we would've lost a lot more.”
When the flood waters went through houses, it left mud and silt that is a “real health hazard”. The Council’s main focus is to get people back into their homes.
“It's going to be a marathon, not a sprint,’ says Little, describing the sight of people’s possessions in a pile of mud out the front of their houses as “just horrible”.
Little says it was the speed with which the flooding happened on the Tuesday morning that caught everyone by surprise.
“Basically it happened at about eight o'clock, they went from sort of seeing a bit of water to within about four or five minutes to seeing a lot of water that had come through their homes. They had no time to evacuate. And in that particular part of town, there's no high area you can go to. They didn't know what was happening really. “
“A lot of our older pensioners were probably still in bed, or still contemplating getting up or having breakfast. I talked to one old gentleman, and he just said that it started coming through. He didn't know what to do, and it just kept coming through. And by the time they got him out, he was up to his chest in water. So we were just blessed that we had no loss of life there.”
Little paid tribute to those who warned others of the impending danger.
“We had one lady, Michelle, who's well known in Wairoa. She woke up and she knew her house was going to go underwater.”
“She got in her car just went up and down the streets, honking on her horn. And everyone's thinking, ‘Who is this mad lady?’ And then they realised they should have listened to her a bit more.”
“Then a couple of farmers got motivated and activated, and they bought their tractors and trailers in, and we got front-end loaders and tractors picking people out of their houses in the buckets.”
He added that having no communications did not help as people did not realise the town was going to flood.
“They had to go and pick up key staff members to man the emergency operations centre and while it was daylight, they were in the dark. Unless you jumped in your car and went somewhere to have look, you didn't know.”
“We didn't know what was happening anywhere in our community, whether Māhia was safe, whether Tuai was safe, Ruakituri, Mohaka, Raupunga, it was scary.”
“We were getting reports in, but we had no communications. We got the people to evacuation centres - we had the Memorial Hall and Taihoa Marae. – and started getting them dry, they were pretty shocked. Glengarry (the retirement village) had to be evacuated as well. It was just chaos, absolute chaos.”
The mayor says that the main issue that was “everything just stopped working” and many people did not have the food and other resources to cope.
“A lot of people live day to day, and that's no criticism of these people. They just don't have money to live, plan their week ahead of them. They might have had a tin of spaghetti in the cupboard. So thank God for helicopters. And once they heard what was happening, we started getting some food supplies in. Our supermarkets were fantastic, what they had, they worked with us. But gosh, we were in a bad place.”
