The communities around Wairoa have been especially badly hit by flooding this time, while the whānau of drowned fishermen Elwood Higgins, Damien Macpherson and Taina Sinoti will be mourning their loss in furious seas off Gisborne on Tuesday night.
Across the region, torrential rain and flooding forced hundreds of people to evacuate after states of emergency were declared. Local businesses were wrecked, more than 400 homes were inundated and thousands were left without power.
The country’s sole lime-juicing business, in Wairoa, has been ruined. The Limery was flooded when the nearby Wairoa River burst its banks, with machinery and vehicles swamped and dragged away, and the plant covered in debris and logs.
The storm, which developed literally out of nowhere on Monday and intensified off East Cape during Tuesday, is yet another significant blow to the North Island’s east coast and to the repairs which have been made since the devastation from Cyclone Gabrielle in February last year.
There was nothing wrong with the weather warnings for the area, which gave residents a couple of days’ notice of the storm’s arrival. But those affected in Wairoa are angry with the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council for not opening a channel for the river to take through the sand bar to the sea.
The council agrees the town would not have flooded as badly if that had been done beforehand. However, chairwoman Hinewai Ormsby said yesterday the decision not to do it early was made on the best information at the time. A review of their processes would be carried out.
Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell waded into Wairoa to hear from residents about the flooding and their annoyance that work on the bar didn’t begin until Tuesday morning, when it was already raining heavily.
Mr Mitchell said he would discuss the delay with the council and would take a paper to Cabinet about it on Monday.
While Gabrielle was one of the worst storms to hit the east coast region in generations, that, unfortunately, does not mean smaller-scale but still highly damaging systems are now less likely to affect residents there.
Unfortunately, there are some signs that, with climate change, La Nina may become a more dominant weather pattern than El Nino. That would be bad news for Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay, potentially opening the door to an increasing number of subtropical storms.
Otago may well end up being the most fortunate part of New Zealand when it comes to climate change and avoiding La Nina-like storms from the north and east.
We can count ourselves lucky that, while we still have severe weather at times, devastation from storms on the scale the North Island’s east coast experiences is rare.
And another thing
Maybe it’s a reflection of the anger which wells up so easily in today’s society, but does it seem there are more stories these days about local body representatives behaving in ways which brings their councils into disrepute?
This time we are not talking about Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark. Instead, a Hamilton city councillor is in the spotlight for his highly offensive comments regarding disabled people, specifically those with cerebral palsy.
First-termer Andrew Bydder, an architectural designer, lost his marbles in a submission on a proposed bridge in Cambridge, using derogatory terms about people with disabilities.
It is repugnant that someone purportedly representing others should choose such cruel nastiness to make his point.
He doesn’t deserve to be even a first-time councillor and certainly is not the kind of person this country needs in its local government sector.
Good on Disability Minister Louise Upston for supporting the disabled community and telling Cr Bydder to act more like an empathetic human being in future.
