Although much of Havelock North seemed to come through Cyclone Gabrielle relatively unscathed with the village opening quickly for business, it’s been, and still is, a horror show for many living in the Tanner Street end of Joll Road.
Walk through the ‘Residents Only’ sign and down the street, even on this hot Monday afternoon nearly a week since the Cyclone, and it’s like entering a war zone. The contents of wrecked homes are piled high, nine HMNS Te Mana sailors in mud-splattered uniforms are on the end of shovels, builders’ vans and insurance assessors are parked up.
So, what happened?
At around 7am on the morning after Cyclone Gabrielle had hit, residents on either side of Mangarau Stream were keeping a watchful eye on the rising water level and crossing their fingers that it’d all be ok. “Yes, they could see there’d be some surface flooding in their gardens and maybe even up to decks,” said one.
But then there was a loud ‘thwack!’ and next minute the water was barrelling back upstream, over its banks and swirling into homes. Mike Bennett and his wife had heard the ‘thwack’ and then quickly had to abandon their house and wade through the front garden in “waist deep water”.
Several others like Rob Wilkins and Malcolm Wells heard the ‘thwack’ too and they have since deduced that the huge old walnut tree that had been cut down some weeks earlier by Council after the last storm, stripped of its branches and leaves and left on the bank awaiting removal, must’ve been swept into the swollen stream and banged up hard against a concrete bridge that usually took residents across into 78 A- E. The force of the tree trunk and the water buckled the bridge, and it formed a huge dam jamming other logs and debris up against it.
“The water had nowhere to go,” says Malcom, “so it turned round.”
Mike Bennett who has lived in Joll Road 42 years and Malcolm Wells 52 years say they have never seen anything like this before. “Cyclone Bola was nothing to this and the stream has never flooded like this before,” says Mike.
At 82 Joll Road, a young family with two small children, is devastated. Their house is full of mud and silt, a brand-new kitchen, less than a week old, part of the pile of rubbish at their gate and even their two cars in the garage rendered worthless by water, mud and silt. They too suspect the huge walnut tree’s trunk, directly across the stream from them, was probably a turning point for the flooding. They don’t want to blame the Council, commented one resident, because “the tree was going to be moved and who knew the cyclone was going to be this bad! ” Nonetheless their lives have been shaken to the core while they await an insurance assessment and move into $800.00-plus per week rental accommodation.
“We’ve got to make sure the stream is properly cleared and further upstream,” says Malcom Wells, as we stare into its now benign trickle. He thinks some of the logs and debris that jammed up Mangarau came from up as far as Tainui Reserve and although he too won’t lay blame, he wants Hastings District Council to take note.
Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.