There's one thing taking the edge off having lost everything in Hawkes Bay, and that's the number of volunteers dropping everything to help. Bonnie Sumner reports from one of the country's hardest-hit regions.
It’s been three weeks since Cyclone Gabrielle turned meandering rivers into deadly floods in Hawkes Bay.
Twice as much rain fell in some parts of the region than it did during Cyclone Bola in 1988, a disaster still talked about today for its ferocity and devastation.
The sheer force of water that made its way down the numerous rivers that feed the ‘fruit bowl’ of Aotearoa on February 14 was catastrophic, smashing through bridges and stop banks and turning orchards, homes and businesses into churning lakes.
The scale of destruction is almost impossible to convey or comprehend. In Napier there have been 118 properties red or yellow stickered in areas like Awatoto and Meeanee, and in Hastings District, which encircles Napier and includes badly affected Eskdale, Waiohiki, Omahu, Pakowhai, Puketapu and Rissington, 758 properties have had the red or yellow pieces of paper stuck to their windows.
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But if there has been a silver lining it is the way in which the community has rallied to help one another.
An army of volunteers continues to purge hundreds of properties of their ruined belongings and the metres-high silt that coats everything.
The rain keeps showing up, fraying nerves and turning that silt back into odorous mud, but that hasn’t stopped the Man Up crew cleaning up houses in Waiohiki.
Geoff is one of the crew. He travelled down from Manurewa in Auckland. They were only meant to be here for a few days but it’s been more than a week now and the mud isn’t deterring them.
“Today there’s about 60 of us. We’ve been here since last week. A call was put out for as many hands as possible.”
They answered that call and have been systematically clearing out every house, including one belonging to Susan, who has lived in Waiohiki for more than 40 years. She was nearly swept away when she stepped off her deck straight into head high water after her house began to flood in the early hours of February 14, and is just grateful for all the help she can get.
“I can’t go to my house right now, it’s just too hard. The Man Up team and my amazing son have stripped it as far as possible. I have to wait to see what comes next.”
Locals helping locals
Chloe Johnson started the Facebook page Cyclone Hawkes Bay Help as a central place people could come to coordinate the clean-up effort. It now has more than 8000 members and three other administrators who have created a number of directories to streamline the operation.
“I was feeling very helpless and very overwhelmed by all of the help that was needed out there. And at that stage there wasn't a place to go to find out who needed help or what to do. So I created a page and a directory, which was a one stop shop, basically, of all of the help that was needed.”
That one-stop shop means people can ask for or offer help and be matched right away.
“What we're seeing on the page is there's a huge need for help, specifically in the clean-ups. And there's also a huge volunteer group or community that want to help with those clean-ups as well. I guess the beauty of the page is that there are so many different skill sets out there. So not everyone can meet at a community hall at 9 o'clock and go and be dispersed to different jobs. Some people might just have two hours in the day and they're like, I've got a shovel, I've got some gumboots, I've got two to three hours free, where can I go?”
To feed the army, every kind of business, from a boutique cupcake maker in Taradale to a local Thai restaurant, are making and then donating food almost daily to deliver to hungry volunteers. In Hastings the Sikh community continues to provide food and water across the region to those in need.
Animals need feeding too, and with so much land now contaminated and unusable there is little grazing around. Napier RDA has stepped in as a central repository for hay and feed donated by farmers and communities from around the country – but getting that feed from one place to another is the next step.
On Saturday a call went out to help a family feed their horses and dogs. Within hours, Dave Harris turned up with his truck to transport hay and dog food from the RDA site in Brookfields across to Bay View.
“It’s just locals helping locals,” he told Newsroom.
Now strangers are turning up to the region from all over Aotearoa to assist in any way they can, too. Many with their tents to pitch on any lawn that will have them so they don’t take up room in homes and motels that could be used for those who have been displaced.
Sheryl McEwan and her husband were travelling from their home in Auckland to the South Island in their campervan and decided to make a detour to volunteer their time.
“We were on our way down and just saw the devastation on TV and thought we’re in a position where we can help so that’s what we’re doing.”
Her first thought when they saw the state of the region was “absolute shock”.
“We visited recently and it’s a really beautiful area. We still haven’t got our heads around how bad it is. People have lost everything.”
They will start off in one of the large sorting logistics centres in Hastings, but are ready to help wherever they’re needed. It’s this generosity that buoys the spirits of locals and keeps the momentum up, even though many residents are living in a state of exhaustion.
Marae the manaakitanga heroes
If there is anywhere that has shown what to do in an emergency it’s the region’s marae, providing kai, shelter, manaakitanga and people power to the whole community.
Ahuriri’s Pukemokimoki Marae in Maraenui has been a central hub organising mountains of clothing, blankets, kai and necessities for the community with social services organisation Roopu a Iwi Trust the logistics operator.
CEO Maureen Mua has been at the marae from the beginning of the cyclone, when people just began to show up.
“It was just horrific to see people walking around, no shoes on, soaking wet. And there was no clothes at that stage. So we were really lucky as staff, we just went home and got whatever we could to at least make it comfortable for them.”
But because they were mostly women, they didn’t have a lot of men’s clothes.
“Some of these RSE workers that were airlifted, they were in shock. They were absolutely in shock where they got here … and it was really hard to find clothing for the men. They were just standing there with just a pair of shorts on and a T-shirt soaking wet. And the one thing they kept asking for was, have you got a charger? Can I use the phone? They wanted to tell their whānau that they were well.”
One of the local police liaisons came and asked Mua how many more people they could fit at the marae.
“We can sleep 100 in our wharenui, but we can actually seat up to 300 in our wharekai. And I said, bring them, at least it’s dry, it’s warm, and they can have a meal, even if we have to put two seats together for them to put their feet up. At least they’re dry and they’ve got a cup of tea.”
Then the Tutaekuri River broke, which sits about 5km from the marae, so the decision was made to evacuate everybody and move everyone up to Centennial Hall.
The marae didn’t flood in the end, but once the water had receded they had no way to sleep anyone because all their mattresses had gone to Centennial Hall. Instead, Pukemokimoki Marae became a place for people to visit and collect up anything they might need from the well-organised donations sent from around the country.
Hundreds of neatly arranged and labelled bags still sit in rows in both the wharenui and wharekai, clothing efficiently sorted into size and age, ready to be collected or sent where it’s needed.
“We started with a table, then ... agreed to two tables, then we got inundated. And what was really exciting was that we actually asked for volunteers, and volunteers just came. They came and we sorted through everything, every bit of clothing we sorted through, put them into size, gender. We did summer, we did winter clothes.”
“We’re very grateful for everything that’s been donated. Everything is clean and people have been really thoughtful.”
One of the local kohanga was damaged and will have to move premises, so they’ve come in to source some toys, nappies, cots and high chairs. “They just come through and get what they need.”
“It was a need that we saw and it was a call that was made out by our local iwi, you know, and one thing that we do know how to do is mobilise as an iwi, as Māori.”
Operations for the donations are gradually winding up now, so the marae can resume its important community work as a centre for visiting kura and manuhiri to the region. It remains a place where flood-affected people can come and talk to a mobile unit from MSD about getting support, and even just a welcoming place for a cup of tea.
“Just so that our whānau that are coming in realise that MSD is on the marae as well, that they can access the Civil Defence grant and that they're aware of it. We'll just keep trying to get the word out.”They’ve also had a mobile clinic on site as well as a GP. Mua says now a lot of the work will need to be in caring for the mental health needs of those who have been through so much.
“I was talking to a couple, they were in their mobile home and they were evacuated. They said at one stage it was ankle deep. By the time they actually started to move, which was probably only about 10 minutes later, it was up to their neck. So lots of trauma and that's still to be, I think, talked through.”
What comes next
For so many, the next step is one that requires more than what volunteers can provide.
Residents in some of the worst-affected areas in semi-rural Awatoto, Brookfields and Meeanee who have spent the past three weeks trying to clear out their properties of all their silt-contaminated belongings told Newsroom they were worried they might be forgotten.
Their lives are now piled up on the side of the road, creating a heartbreaking and hazardous mess.
There are complaints the councils have agreed to help remove silt from orchards and businesses but not homes, and rubbish is piling up in some of the hardest-hit areas of cyclone-ravaged Napier with locals having to beg the council for help to remove it.
So desperate are residents for assistance, two local fruit growers brought Napier mayor Kirsten Wise and Hawkes Bay Regional Councillor Neil Kirton on a tour of the area earlier in the week to show them the extent of the issue.
“A lot of people here are elderly, they need help. Volunteers have helped clear out their houses, many of which have been red or yellow stickered, but they don’t have the means to remove the rubbish," Brendan told them.
Another grower, Carl, paid for two skip bins himself for an elderly couple who, up until the flood, grew and sold vegetables. Their home, hot houses and land were inundated by a wave of contaminated silt and water when the river stop banks broke.
“Their daughter came down from Auckland and she’s been standing around bawling her eyes out trying to work out what the hell to do, so I got two bins to help with the food waste that’s going to cause rat problems, but as far as I’m concerned they aren’t capable of dealing with the rest of this.
“These are people who have lost everything.”
He said thanks to volunteers they had managed to get the destroyed items onto the street. “We didn’t really have a plan except to get it out of there onto here,” he says, pointing to a line of belongings stretching almost 200m.
Mayor Kirsten Wise told Carl and Brendan the council would look into having the waste removed.
“For their mental health and wellbeing it needs to go,” Wise told them while they stood outside one property whose owners had lived there for 40 years, their belongings now a silt-covered mess on the road. “I’ll be going back to our logistics team to see how quickly we can get some trucks and things here.”
A week on from this meeting, Newsroom approached Napier City Council to find out when the rubbish collection would begin, and were told it would start that day.
“We have contractors starting in Meeanee today to clear what’s outside properties already, and we’ll make our way around the city from there. If people haven’t got their flood-damaged items on the kerbside yet, we will come back to collect at a later date,” said a representative.
This is music to locals’ ears, and something Chloe Johnson from the Cyclone Hawkes Bay Help page says will be key to the region’s recovery.
“There's this wonderful spirit and feeling that's happening in Hawkes Bay at the moment and ever since the cyclone hit. And I truly believe that that is the volunteer community that's made that happen and has fuelled everyone's energy. But people are starting to get tired, they're starting to get a little bit depleted and deflated, so we need to keep that energy going and we need to try and avoid that burnout as well.
“It's the marathon isn't it, not the sprint. And hopefully the local and [central] governments start to step in soon and the volunteers can back off a little bit.”
