Despite our house being completely unaffected, and our physical safety never compromised, the devastation our town experienced during Cyclone Gabrielle affected everyone.
As the cyclone approached we moved our belongings to higher levels, secured our outside stuff, and went to bed feeling pretty optimistic. We heard the wind and rain in the night and I got up at one point to have a look. It did seem pretty extreme but I wasn't at all worried at that stage.
We woke up on February the 14th to find we had no power, but this is not too unusual, we have them at various times in Napier, and we often had many days without power at Waikaremoana . We soon realised , though, that we had no mobile signal either, and I don't remember that ever happening before.
We mucked around finding gas cookers and batteries etc, the rain and wind were gone and we had no reason to think anything more was going on. But then we receieved the emergency announcement on our mobile phones telling residents around Omahu, Waiohiki and Taradale to evaucate as the Tutaekuri river burst its banks. We live just outside the specified area, so I quickly drove up to our friends' houses to let them know they could come to ours.
At this point, we still didn't know that the Eskdale Valley had already been completely decimated and many residents had spent the night clinging to rooftops in fear.
(Days later we heard stories such as This from the Guardian: "When the family woke in the early hours of the morning, the water was already calf-deep. Kelly remembers trying to wade across the yard to a neighbour’s two-storey home. As the water reached her shoulders, she realised she was beginning to drift in the current. “I realised we couldn’t swim to safety,” she says. “There was no getting out.” “See there, that dent?” Michael says, pointing to where the guttering of the house has bent downwards. It marks where a man being swept past in the flood had grabbed on – the corner of the McKendrys’ roof the first thing he had managed to keep hold of. He had been swept down from a caravan park more than a kilometre up the road.")
But we didn't know that then as we still had no mobile signal, but once we managed to find our battery operated radio we became more aware of the big picture. Our friends came around with their grab bags, and we spent the afternoon listening to various bits of news trickling in. Unexpectedly, Civil Defense announced that the river stopbanks alongside Taradale had luckily done their job, and our friends were allowed to go home.
I was really worried about not being able to communicate with my kids, my Mum, or my brother, to let them know we were okay. We knew they would have seen it on the news but there was literally no way to tell them. I asked a couple of people to try and get a message out, as some mobile providers had a weak signal every now and then, so we hoped they had received something.
The horror of what had happened began to hit home. I spent most of the next night listening to talk back radio where the presenters were asking for anyone from Wairoa (or surrounding areas) to please make contact as they had heard absolutely nothing from that region since the cyclone hit. This was bad, and we knew people who lived in the areas that were hit, but we had no way of finding out if they were okay.
The following days were a bit surreal. We were in a little bubble with no power and no communication, but we were otherwise fine. The radio was wonderful. We were told to stay home, and save water. We weren't supposed to flush the loo or have a shower, and we were given instructions on how to dispose of rotting food. Then our local radio station mentioned a place in town that were offering people 30 minutes of free wifi each day. This would allow me to talk to my family. Sitting on the kerb, surrounded by many others doing the same, I finally spoke to Joe and Mum. They were relieved to hear from us, but luckily, one of my friends' texts had managed to reach them the day before, so they had known we were safe. It was so strange, and quite emotional, to actually speak to them for the first time.
The significance of the widespread power cut suddenly felt quite scary when it got dark. I was still in town, and hadn't thought about what that would be like. We obviously had no traffic lights or road signals during the day either, but to have the whole city plunge into a pitch black darkness was really overwhelming. There was not a light to be seen anywhere.
Inevitably, the city became targeted by looters, and the dark hours of the night began to be monitored by police from the air. 145 extra staff were deployed to the Eastern District from around the country including Search and Rescue and the Police Air Support Unit, known as Eagle.
We started to get some 'living without power' routines in place at home, and a local supermarket opened with limited supplies. I queued up to get some bread, milk, and chocolate! Some people had generators, but of course they struggled to get fuel. And we were really lucky to be able to use the small fridge and hot shower in our solar powered campervan. One petrol station opened and queues were long, and then, finally, they repaired the connecting bridge, and people could drive to Hastings. But it was still the only way out of the region. The Napier-Taupo and Napier-Wairoa roads were apparantly going to be closed for a long time.
The NZ Herald reported that people in Napier could be without electricity for a fortnight as Transpower battles to re-establish supply after Cyclone Gabrielle’s devastation of the Redclyffe sub-station near Taradale. The warning of the extended outage came in a Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence update, and Transpower says that given the extensive damage and the likely time to repair the station, its focus now is on “creating a bypass” for its 220KV line to enable it to connect to the Whakatu substation, north-east of Hastings".
Slowly, things began to improve, power was restored gradually, street by street it seemed, and each day there was a new bit of normal. Each mobile provider got us back online at different times, and my daily visit to the '30 minutes of WiFi' building stopped (which felt strangely sad as I had come to look forward to the sense of community and shared moments with the other people there, many of whom were calling overseas like me). Unlike Covid, if we emerged from our 'lockdown' kind of world for some reason, we didn't need to avoid human contact. Some cafes started to open and, after a couple of weeks, the CBD became more normal. Like an oasis among the devastation all around it.
Many orchards and vineyards were completely wiped out, and some big Hawkes Bay employers such as Panpac (with 800 employees), Ravensdown, and Bremworth, had their sites destroyed. 'We're not going anywhere': Flood-hit businesses vow to rebuild
Two months on, the Civil Defence Emergency Management Group are still carrying out supply drops by helicopter or unimog, and the Napier-Wairoa road remains closed after becoming unrecognisable in the wake of the floods . Access to the mountain areas are limited, and DOC tracks and huts are mostly closed or inaccessible. The Napier-Taupo road is now open, but there are many road works and temporary traffic lights in place. I have just driven it for the first time since Gabrielle hit, and the devastation I saw in Eskdale really shocked me. The photos and videos cannot portray the scale of the cyclone's destruction. I cannot imagine how the family's that survived the disaster by swimming out of their homes are coping after such a traumatic experience.
11 people lost their lives. Napier is a small community and we all know someone who knew them. It's devastating, and many of us wished we could have done more to help. We all tried to do our bit when we could. Everyone talks about the rollercoaster of emotions, the survivors guilt, the disbelief at what happened, and the issues around helping are complex. Safety, pollution, insurance, personal liability, etc, and many people had their own source of income to take care of too.
The clean up is going to take a very long time. Today, the Government has pledged another $25 million to assist businesses impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle. These additional funds come in the wake of the $50 million that was previously committed.
This event has been massive for our town, and the photos, videos, and news reports I share on this blog tell the story of the aftermath. I've tried to acknowledge author's and photographers, but if anyone sees an item on here that they want me to remove, or give credit for, please get in touch. Any photos that were not taken by myself were found on public websites.
