This article was first published by RNZ
It was supposed to be a coming together, a celebration at a marae for a first birthday.
But the water, and lots of it, came by stealth in the dead of night.
Pattinson Wetere was in a small cabin on the side of the road to Ōakura.
He said the rain started early in the morning.
By 5am, he woke to feel the cabin he was in moving.
“I quickly opened the door, jumped into the raging flood, rushed to the other one before it could take off because our baby was in there and my partner was in there,” he told RNZ.
Soon, he was in knee-deep water trying to save not only his moko but his partner, who would be pinned by rising water and snared by a barbed wire fence.
He was in one of two small cabins when the water began pushing them along the ground.
He grabbed his 3-year-old granddaughter first and threw her into a four-wheel drive, but the water had come so fast it already had water in the footwell.
He got the ute and his moko across the road to Mokau Marae.
Wetere then went back for his partner and a grandson, Dayton.
“They were both hanging onto the fence because the current was too swift. Had they let the fence go, they would have got taken in the brown water,” he said.
Dayton was desperately trying to pull Wetere’s partner onto the road.
“But she was hooked against the fence on the barbed wire ... by the time I had noticed, I put my hand down, ripped what she was wearing, we locked hands, me on one side and Dayton on the other, like a human chain, and we pulled her out of the current and through the gate,” he said.
“It was hard trying to get up onto the road because the current was so strong.”
Dayton had made the woman grab onto the fence with both hands.
“She was trying to hold her bag with her belongings and valuables in it to save, but by the time I had got back down there, he had told her to let it go and save ourselves.”
In daylight, part of her ripped pyjamas were still tangled on the barbed fence.
“We pulled her out of the ditch, and she was lost. She thought she was going to drown,” Wetere said.
Wetere and his grandson dragged his partner, hands still linked, onto the road.
Not that they could see it.
The water was over the road and level with the fence, Wetere said.
He described it as swimming for dear life.
At the marae, there was refuge for his partner and a hot shower.
“She was just traumatised that she could have died.”
Scores of people already asleep at the marae began to wake, and their own fears quickly heightened at the sight of the rushing water.
More than 100 people were there, sleeping and unaware.
“Everybody started to panic and I said ‘no, this is going to be our emergency hut for now’.”
Wetere said he pleaded with everyone to stay, fearing lives would be lost otherwise.
“Some tried their luck but only got to the base of the hill and turned around and came back,” Wetere said.
“I said as long as the water was that high, we’re not going anywhere.”
Wetere said he still could not believe how high the water was.
From the marae, Wetere can see the cabins across the road, shunted along the ground next to the caravan that wasn’t there the day before.
He took RNZ back to them, nervously, after the ordeal the night before.
They had moved several metres and had mud smeared inside.
His own ute, waterlogged, wouldn’t start.
Ōakura hammered
The road to Ōakura is caked in mud and littered with rocks and trees.
Paddocks are underwater, in some places up to the top of the fences.
Shanne McInnes, in his holiday home, has described finding everything in his garage afloat, including the boat on its trailer.
Donna Kerridge had water creeping up past her windowsills.
“Our bedroom, our shower is full of mud, it’s up over hand basins, up the wall, it’s all up to chest high, the flooding that came through,” she said.
But it’s the heart of the small beach community that has significant damage with mud, trees and debris taking aim at the Ōakura Community Hall.
It was only re-roofed and renovated about a year and a half ago after a fundraiser.
Glenn Fergusson chairs the Reserves Board, which the hall comes under.
He described torrential rain.
“The hill behind the hall has slipped, forcing the back wall of the hall inside the hall and also all of the trees and slip material is sitting now on our nice polyurethane hall floor,” he said.
“That’s the stage, that was the stage. Unfortunately, we had a group of people that had booked the hall for an unveiling, they had all their tables set out, all their food ready, everything was ready to go.
“To come back and find it like this was pretty devastating for everybody.”
Fergusson said the next step was to be in touch with the insurance company.
“Seeing what they say we need to do or can do or how we’re going to approach it to get it cleaned out because it’s all going to have to be removed by hand in a wheelbarrow out through the front door,” he said.
He estimated 50 or 60 cubic metres of mud would need to be moved.
Rallying people to lend a hand was also on the list of things to do.
“We’ve just got the hall finished and we put a new kitchen in it and got it all sorted and now we’re going to have to pull it all out and start again,” Fergusson said.
Whangārei District Council said on Sunday night that most roads were now accessible and campers have either left the area or made themselves safe.
About 300 had been evacuated from campgrounds.
A small number of people were still in marae being used for community-led Civil Defence centres, the council said.
The urgency of the current threat had now cleared, it said.
But it warned Civil Defence was now getting ready for more heavy rain that was forecast for later in the week.
It said the weekend deluge included 285mm falling at Punaruku.
By Kim Baker Wilson and Peter de Graaf of RNZ
