Video: Hope and optimism remains for Twyford grower despite cyclone devastation
The mud and silt may have dried and the water subsided, but the devastation caused to Jerf van Beek’s house and orchards by Cyclone Gabrielle is still real.
A month on from the Cyclone, the Twyford orchardist and Hawke’s Bay Regional Councillor, is still processing what happened the day a wall of “angry water from the Ngaruroro River engulfed his property and changed his life for ever. Two days after the destruction, Van Beek was emotional as he spoke to Hawke’s Bay App in his muddy yard. https://cdn.hbapp.co.nz/news/news/video-twyford-fruit-grower-recounts-devastation-caused-by-cyclone-gabrielle
A month later, when Hawke’s Bay App visited, he is still coming to terms with what happened, but is upbeat about the future.
“It seems surreal. With help of the community and family, we've got to the point now that we actually have nearly reached ground zero where we are at a point that we can start to rebuild again.”
But, the horror of that day still remains.
“It is a bit of a nightmare, I must admit, but it's a nightmare that you not wake up from. So this is real, but it is what it is and we just need to make the best of it.”
He says it is important for people leading the charge to keep their heads and confidence up because “everybody feeds from that”.
“We will come back from this. I'm a hundred per cent sure. We had a community meeting yesterday here in Twyford and that was a really good time having a meal and a drink together and talking about our stories, but also our plans and dreams for the future.”
With regard to his own orchards, Van Beek says some of the trees are salvageable.
“Yeah, a small amount. We will harvest this block that is behind me. As you can see there's a large pile of dead trees in a big heap. They of course are not salvageable. We don't quite know what to do with that waste problem. We are working on that as we speak. The apples will be picked that are still hanging on the tree above the flood line. So it's important that we give those who still have crop the opportunity to continue to harvest that.”
“It's good for those who are working in the industry, for pack houses. And I said it before, if we can continue to operate as growers and farmers, it is good for our community. Without it, we just don't have a chance as a community.”
He says in the days after the event, the enormity of the situation got a bit much for him and he needed help in the recovery process.
“I pride myself of actually being able to manage reasonable well large groups of people, but I just wasn't able to, the stress was just too great.”
“I made a sort of a council of a couple of people who actually made decisions for me and that was the best thing we could do. And that's how they could see priorities. They could see the wood through the trees and the forest through the trees. And so, they actually made it happen.”
Slowly but surely the path to normality got easier.
“Sitting around and having a clean place where just we could have a coffee or tea and a bit of a piece of cake that was brought in by the community, those were important times for us to get together and have a bit of fun. In that way, we could rebuild each other from morning smoko to lunch to afternoon smoko to a beer at the end of the day.”
“We just made it fun and they made the difficult decisions easy for us.”
With their house uninhabitable at present Van Beek and his wife Carla are living in Clive, but there is hope they will be able to return after a rebuild. Salvaging the house needed them to act quickly.
“We had to work really fast. It's a bit of a special home. It's a straw home that Carla and I built ourselves more or less with our own hands.”
The straw needed to be removed from the walls as it was beginning to rot because it was wet and it was hot.
“Now we're actually working on the plan of rebuilding that wall structure again.”
“We believe we can be back in the house again. The structural engineer has given it the thumbs up that we've got a plan and it's a good plan and it's possibly maybe even stronger than it was before. Maybe not as nice as before, but it's be stronger than before.”
Van Beek says contamination from all the silt remains an issue, but testing is being done.
Despite it all he remains positive and acutely aware that there are others who have suffered worse than him.
“The general mantra is that others are worse off and they are, there's no two ways about it. I've seen some places that have just been completely, almost wiped off. For us, it's been the community and we have a very strong and large church community that have supported us and they've been fantastic.”
“We understand that these things happen to us and therefore a reason and we don't question them and we don't blame anyone. We just need to move on and move on better than we have before.”
Van Beek says the silver lining has been the friends they have made – people who have offered help and financial assistance.
“We were very blessed before this all happened. We may be slightly blessed now, but we're still in a very good space. “
“Hawke's Bay is a great place to live. We are not moving from here, we're going to stay and we're going to rebuild again.”
“We live on a flood plain. That's how Hawke's Bay's been built. What can you expect?”
