As Gore and Mataura residents begin to return to their homes and businesses, many are assessing how lucky — or not — they have been after two days of floodwater sweeping through their towns.
At 5pm yesterday, the sun was shining but Trafford St was empty.
Mary Dunlop was one of the first to return home.
After having been nine hours away from home, she said she felt lucky knowing ‘‘some poor people’’ would have suffered through much more than a day’s displacement at a welfare centre.
‘‘Sitting in the car and looking up our street — not everybody’s home yet, but you wouldn’t know anything had happened,’’ she said.
‘‘It was very eerie this morning. And, of course, with a river this size you never know.
‘‘It just didn’t feel right. It just felt like something was going to happen.’’
As the Mataura River rushed through the Southland towns yesterday, low-lying commercial areas were swamped; hay bales bobbed past speed limit signs in flooded streets; several abandoned cars were submerged; livestock sought higher ground in flooded paddocks; and, at 11am, the Otago Regional Rescue Helicopter winched a stranded homeowner from an inundated home.
Upon waking at 7am on Tuesday, Sacha Ramsay found her Knapdale farm about 4km north of the Gore bridge was flooded.
She rescued a dozen bridal gowns from knee-deep water in her ground floor private bridal studio on the property and drove to her in-laws’ place to find higher ground.
By noon on Tuesday, Knapdale Rd was impassable and yesterday afternoon she was still unable to return home.
While she knew her neighbours were suffering, she was grief-stricken thinking about the future of her business.
‘‘To me, it’s terrifying. And we are just devastated. There’s no other word for it. This is our dream.’’
At the Calvin Community Church, the first welfare centre activated in Gore, the Rev Ken Williams said more than 200 people had been registered since Tuesday afternoon; yesterday about 130 may have stayed for dinner.
Downstream, Mataura was a ghost town by 9.30am as most of the town’s 1500 residents were encouraged, assisted or ordered to evacuate.
The sound of emergency sirens echoed around town as residents headed 15km south to evacuation centres in Edendale.
Yvonne McFadzien described the situation as being like a ‘‘movie scene’’.
She was among the hundreds who ended up at the Presbyterian Church and the Christian Activity Centre in Edendale for the day.
Church volunteer co-ordinator Dave McKenzie said people were arriving there in a variety of emotional states.
‘‘Some arrive quite upset ... Others just need a place to put their feet up and have a cup of tea after what has been a quite traumatic morning.’’
Gore-Mataura Highway residents Veronica and Corey Woodrow said they were sleeping when police knocked on their door and asked them to evacuate.
‘‘We just left. I grabbed my dogs because I couldn’t leave them. They are shaking because they hate travelling. But my heart is broken because we left our two cats there, but cats can climb so they will be all right,’’ Mrs Woodrow said.
Sharon Dugdale hoped she could return home as soon as possible as she had left all her treasured belongings at home.
‘‘We don’t know when we will be able to return home. And we did not have time to turn off all the electrical appliances. So I might have lost everything.
‘‘To be honest, at this stage, I just want to return home to my dogs.’’
