My Facebook posting from about 8am Dec 14th. How prescient I was! We'd had a month of wet weather - the ground was completely saturated. When it is like this, even a moderate rainfall of 100mm will cause flooding. In the end we got over 600mm within 48 hours, the biggest rainfall ever recorded in an urban area in NZ. It was deemed to be a 1 in 500 year flood.
Driving home from town on Wed afternoon. At this point is was just a normal flood. This is Rameka Creek.
The river running out of Quarry Farm near Hangdog
Later in the day Beth and I went towards Takaka, but didn't make it. This photo is of Clifton Crossroads. This is on the brow of a hill - how come water is ponding here?
Between the Roastery and Motupipi corner there were 20 fords to cross. This one is just south of the school.
This photo taken from Cassidy's (Rototai) Corner looking back to the Motupipi Bridge. Fast-moving water everywhere!
Glenview Road was closed due to this river crossing the road.
Driving back up Richmond Road we notice a stream starting to pour down the road
The water was coming down valley past the caves. The caves normally take all the storm water, but they had silted up, so suddenly the water had nowhere to go except down the road.
It didn't take long before the stream became a raging torrent. Water travelling down a road picks up a lot of speed!! Phil (being the physicist) talked a lot about laminar flow versus turbulent flow!
Within a few minutes the asphalt started to lift. This pushed the stream sideways into the back yard of several houses. We spent the next few hours helping to stem the flow into these houses.
Another 100mm of rain overnight and a bigger flood came through. The next morning - you can see there was a lot of water! In the end we had over 400mm of rain in about 30 hours. A big rainfall event here is 120mm. And this was on top of saturated soil.
The intersection of Bay Vista Drive and Richmond Road
Our property had a couple of slips. This is the small slip onto our lower patio.
It hit the side of the spa pool, though luckily this wasn't damaged.
Looking down our steps to this slip - anyone want a slightly used barbeque?
Higher up, a larger slip has come right off the ridge-line behind
Beautiful mamaku groves gifted to us, along with tonnes of mud
Thurs afternoon we go for a walk to Pohara Valley to check on friends. This is Richmond Road, which was starting to dry out.
The stream running across the properties at the bottom of Pohara Valley
The volume of silt continues to shock
Walking up lower Pohara Valley Road - tricky to cross in places
There was quite a torrent still pouring down the road - intersection of Haile Lane with Pohara Valley Rd
Looking up Haile Lane
Many properties had been damaged by the water
The worst hit was Chris Udell's house - logjams forced the river through the house. Note the waterfall in the middle of the photo.
The force is shocking.
From Falconer Road, the sideroad up Mark and Tracey's place has been replaced with a gulch.
We did quite a number of scary stream crossings that day
Heading down Haile Lane, this is the water supply dam. Despite appearances, the dam is still there and the water supply was back working within a week.
The water treatment station was inundated and will need some cleanout.
Raging Haile Lane
We turned back at this point. Definitely not safe. What you don't see in these photos is the speed at which this water is flowing.
Lower Pohara Valley Road. TV One News in the background sending their story back via satellite!
On Fri afternoon some complete strangers turned up to give a hand. The gloopy mud was impossible to shovel so we used hands.
On Saturday a few of us biked around to Ligar Bay. We thought that Pohara Valley was bad but this was a lot worse. A large log-filled torrent had swept through the sub-division
It was shocking to see how much damage there was
A number of people got out by the skin of there teeth once they heard the torrent heading towards them. If it had occurred at night there would have been fatalities.
Many of the houses have been completely written off
Even after seeing a lot of damage in Pohara, we were truly shocked at what we saw here
The Wainui Hill road suffered a lot of damage, with about 20 slips like this. Almost every one where there was a culvert across the road, putting even more water into the already-overloaded soil.
This house used to be just below the road - got carried down with a slip. Luckily it was unoccupied.
