Video: Wairoa's rebuild needs to be resilient for the future, says District Mayor
Any decisions made to rebuild Wairoa need to be resilient for the future, says District Mayor Craig Little.
Little spoke at length to Hawke’s Bay App about the devastation that Cyclone Gabrielle caused in his region -Devastation, heartbreak and tears in cyclone-hit Wairoa
He is also clear about what is needed to rebuild the district – careful planning and government support.
“There's a lot of talk about lifting the houses up, but you might lift them up a metre this week or this year, and then in 10-years-time, you might have to lift another metre. So everything we do has to be resilient for the future. And so we are looking at everything.”
Little says alternative routes have been mapped out for the Wairoa river, but that also presented its own problems.
“That river's got a mind of its own. And I don't think you're going to tell it to go one way if it wants to go another. And it's just a force of that water, it's just inconceivable. It's just like you go into these homes, a freezer full of food would be tipped upside down. How the hell does that happen?
“That's the big part of our resilience moving forward. So we've got obviously response, recovery, and resilience. It’s like the road to Napier. I don't think it can go up around Devil’s Elbow again. It's got to go somewhere that's going to be fit for purpose in the future.”
Little says that New Zealand is good at “putting patches on things” whereas other countries like Australia and Japan do a “magnificent job of fixing things up”.
“Maybe we need to look at countries where they have monsoons that come through and just see how they deal with their water in these events.”
The key to any rebuild is money and he is expecting the Government to pay for work already done to alleviate the devastation.
“Basically we need money. I don't want excuses that they can't pass. I don't want them to say, ‘Oh gosh, you moved all that silt from around those houses. You should have waited till we gave you the green light.’ If I'd waited for that, we'd still be waiting.
“I went and walked those streets, and I could see those people needed help now. So I just made the call. I just said to them: ‘Right, put your rubbish out the front. We're picking it up.’"
He has no doubt that more help is needed.
“We've got a million dollars we've raised ourselves in our recovery fund, there's no government money in that at all. So we need it.”
Little is supportive of the Government’s special Lotto draw for communities hit by Cyclone Gabrielle, but he is worried that Wairoa, because of its small size will be overlooked.
He says his council still needs to pay about $1.4m for Cyclone Villa, but this hasn’t been paid into the annual plan yet.
“We've got 1.4 on the back foot. And then now we've got whatever we're going to have to pay for this. We can't afford it. And a lot of communities can't. And local government gets a real bad rap sometimes.”
“But we don't have enough money. We can't write cheques. We have a limited rate base. And the government honestly needs to start really understanding the importance of localism, but how we need more money just to operate.”
Little says his council need assurances from the government of continued financial support.
“My biggest thought has been that they're with us now, but they might not be with us in a week or two. And God help us. That can never happen.”
