Cyclone Gabrielle – Denise McBride

Good morning. My name is Denise McBride, and this is my Cyclone Gabrielle story.

Cyclone Gabrielle struck the East Coast of the North Island on the night of Monday, 13 February 2023. My sister and I had been receiving regular weather reports tracking its approach to the top of the North Island along with the rest of New Zealand, and warnings were being put out by Civil Defence and local councils to prepare for the worst. It was expected to hit Northland and work its way down along the East Coast. I texted our sister and husband in Gisborne to make sure they were prepared, and she told me she had filled their bath with water after cleaning it thoroughly, she insisted, as it had been suggested by the local council to do so. I joked about it not being the best time to have a bath – there was a cyclone approaching.

Megan tidied all our outdoor furniture away and I moved some pots of precious plants under shelter. We repacked our emergency kits of food and essentials, filled bottles of water, brought the camping cooker inside along with the gas bottle and made sure there were fresh batteries in all our torches and the lone transistor.

The previous evening, Sunday, Megan was thinking about her friend who works for Civil Defence in Napier. She had an old dog of sixteen years, and she was concerned that long work hours would be put in at CD, and so phoned to offer to mind the dog at our house for the next few days. The dog was used to coming over and staying with us and needed his regular medication each day; and who would know if his home would end up being flooded while his mum was at work? So at 8.30 pm a dog-swap was done at Clive, the halfway point, and Barney came to stay with us.

Monday

It had rained continuously for the previous two days and by Monday evening had begun to fall in torrents. We anxiously settled in for the cyclone to arrive that night. The cats and dog were inside safe, and we later headed to our beds not knowing what sort of night’s sleep we’d have. The rain was tremendously loud on our roof and I barely slept. I was up and about the house with a torch, checking windows, the animals, and the trees outside, and checking Facebook for news of what was happening around the region.

I heard muffled dripping sounds in my bedroom and found rain was coming in through my ceiling onto the carpet, so I threw a towel under it and went back into bed. The power went off at 2.15 am, and all of Havelock was in darkness. I managed to drop off for about two hours as dawn broke; the heavy rain had lessened by then.

Megan and I met in the kitchen at the same time and had similar stories to tell of our sleepless nights. She switched on her trusty little transistor, and we started to hear about the devastation wrought up north and over parts of Hawke’s Bay.

Tuesday

We had had the foresight to fill some flasks the night before with boiling water, and so enjoyed our first cup of tea for the day. Megan popped down our drive to give a neighbour a cup of tea, and to check that she was okay. On her return Megan read her phone messages that’d come through in the night. With shock we learned that a friends’ house and property down in Joll Road had been flooded and they had been evacuated along with many others. She quickly got dressed and drove off to find them, expecting that they had been evacuated to the Havelock North Community Centre, as that was what we’d read online on the Havelock North community page. A short while later, Megan came home to say there was no sign of anyone at the Centre, and no notices with information as to where evacuees would be.

We walked down our driveway and reviewed the small amount of damage that we had sustained. A large branch had fallen across our single clothesline and broken it; the orange tree was lying on its side down a bank, and a weeping willow further down the driveway had lost a large branch, and it’s debris was partly blocking our drive … not much compared to what others had lost as we were soon to find out.

We walked along our cul-de-sac and already there were neighbours out with chainsaws, cutting fallen branches on their properties and stacking the debris on the grass berms for the council to remove in the future. The Mangarau Stream which flows alongside our street had breached and covered parts of it, but luckily the water was already starting to recede. Thankfully there was no thick covering of silt left behind. Looking down our street towards the park, we could see big trees down and partially blocking the stream and would have blocked it. Banks along the backs of the houses had been gouged away and swept away, taking people’s lovingly planted banks. Debris of all sorts was lying high on the remains of the banks – tyres, fence posts, green waste, plastic bags, rocks and concrete.

We talked with some of our neighbours; one young teenage girl was concerned about her father’s welfare as he had been sent up to Wairoa with the Napier Fire Department, and because communication was down the family didn’t know how he was faring.

Megan decided to drive into Hastings and check to see if our flooded friends had been evacuated to the Sports Stadium on Maraekakaho Road. Someone on the street had suggested that that might be where evacuees were being sent.

I decided to walk down Joll Road, which is a continuation of our cul-de-sac, to check on our friends’ house. There were crowds of people about; some devastated householders; some dog walkers; some curious people. A large tree had come down across the road, exactly where a couple of years before during a storm, another huge tree had fallen from the same property, both times bringing down the power lines. There was orange safety tape around the site and chainsaws were already at work, but I was still able to walk past this. This devastation really shocked me; about eight houses in a row on Joll Road plus some on back sections behind that row, had been flooded by our Mangarau stream. An ankle-deep sea of water and gray silt covered every property, and the road. Some fences were down and washed-up debris was strewn everywhere. It was hard to imagine how this was going to be cleaned up.

I took some photos of the devastation on the way home, including the damage at our house as proof of what had happened in case we needed to call on our insurance company, and set to clearing a bedroom out for our friends to stay in. Megan texted me to say she’d found our friends; they were so glad to see her. They said that their neighbours had banged on their door about 6am and evacuated them from their house in metre-high swirling water, and had loaned them a spare car to take themselves to the evacuation centre as most cars in the street were already being swamped by muddy water. The same neighbours continued down the road, checking on every household and rescuing more people.

Our friends also believed that the Havelock North Community Centre was the place to go. Finding it dark and empty, a stranger directed them to the Sports centre in Hastings, the official evacuation centre. On arrival their details were taken and they were offered a cup of coffee and told to find somewhere to sit – this was in an almost empty Sports Stadium with what looked like gym mats in rows all over the floor, and a few chairs scattered about. This is where Megan found them, seated together, clutching their coffee and looking damp and bewildered. They were relieved to be told they had a bed at our house and drove back to Havelock, deciding to stop at their house – or what remained of their property – to see what damage had been done since it had been dark when they left it.

Megan and I met them down there, each carrying a bag of items that we thought we’d need for cleaning … rubber gloves, garden tools, brushes, masks, bottles of water, cloths. These bags became our constant companions over the following weeks, not forgetting the wearing of old clothes, and our gumboots. Such a sad, sad, sight; the water had gone right across the whole section, entering the house and leaving a twenty centimetre tidemark on the walls and a layer of silt over the floors and carpets. Outside, the extensive vege garden and mostly potted plant collection was lying under twenty to thirty centimetres of silt in places. The water had obviously swelled around the house as items that usually lived in the back yard were swept around to new positions in the front of the house; plant pots were upturned, smashed, and lying on their sides, sucked down by the silt. Corn cobs were still looking good at the tops of their leaning stalks; beans waiting to be harvested hung above grey, mangled vines; rhubarb leaves popped out of the layer of silt, their stalks hidden.

We set to work inside not really knowing where to start first, and started dragging affected belongings out to the grass verge at the front of the house. I began to clear silt off the bathroom floor and emptied the bottom shelves of the cupboard. Everything was wet and silty; the shower tray had three centimetres of silt lying in it, and the toilet wasn’t working. Eventually the silt was cleared from the floor – one room down, plenty more to go.

The house smelt damp and dank, and without power we kept an eye on the failing light outside as to when we would stop work. We all headed home feeling very sober from the enormity of the task, and very, very tired. We cooked dinner on the camping stove which was set up on our kitchen bench. Without power there was no TV to sit and lose ourselves in; emotions were raw, and after much discussion about what would happen next we all headed to bed, hoping to catch up on some sleep. I managed to get a decent amount of sleep and was very glad of it.

[Wednesday]

Megan and I were up about the same time in the morning and I decided to make pancakes for breakfast. I had two pans on the go, and we eventually sat down to pancakes with real Canadian maple syrup which our friends had given us from a recent trip to Canada to see family. It seemed the right thing to do at the time … fill the tummy and mind with something good. I put some leftover pancakes in a container along with a mug of tea for our neighbour, and left them at her door, knowing that she also didn’t have power.

Our friends left to go down to their house, and Megan and I grabbed Barney the dog and took him into town with us as he’d run out of his meds. He’d only packed for two days as he wasn’t expecting to stay any longer than that. We drove to Hastings via Te Aute Road and Railway Road as the local roads were covered in tree debris and there was lots of traffic about. We stopped by at the Sports Stadium on the off-chance there was wifi available. Noticing that there were a lot of people in the packed carpark using their phones, Megan got out and approached a woman; yes, there was free wifi in the grounds. We both sat in the car and sent text messages to friends and family in New Zealand and across the seas, telling them that we were fine and there was no power and no wifi at home, so no chance of contact for the time being.

We googled to find an emergency vet for Barney’s meds, and found one nearby. They were able to give us more of his meds, thankfully. We decided to go back to the Stadium car park and use our phones; who would’ve believed how much we depended on them for communication? We already knew our older sister and husband in Gisborne were okay, and we knew that power was off for them as well, from Megan’s transistor; also that the main water pipe had been broken in Gisborne, and everyone was being urged to save water. Thank goodness for my sister’s bath supply.

While catching up on the local news, noises made me look up, and suddenly about six army unimogs pulled up on the street in front of us, one behind the other. A dog was howling mournfully from one of the vehicles. Army personnel began to help people off the back of the very high vehicles – mums, dads, kids, kuia, all closely clutching bags or some sort containing hurriedly gathered items; some wearing blankets, unkempt hair and empty eyes; cats in cages and dogs on leads. It was the saddest sight for me. We see displaced persons on our TVs in other countries due to war, earthquake, famine and weather, but to see it in the here and now was pretty devastating.

A female reporter was [with]in earshot of me, and she asked army personnel where these people had come from. He answered, “Waiohiki, Napier and Clive.” All these survivors of the cyclone and flood were shepherded into the Sports Stadium; as they shuffled past us we heard a little boy ask his father, “Is this where we’re going to live now?”

Since we were out and about we decided to try and visit a friend of Megan’s who lived out at Haumoana, on the beachfront, but as we headed out towards Clive our plan was thwarted by closed off roads and lots of orange road cones. So we headed home, made sandwiches for lunch, and took some down to our friends in Joll Road, which had been closed off to everyone bar residents. Already there had been cases of looters seen slowly driving along Joll Road at night, flashing torches into the wrecked houses and onto the piles of debris on the berm. This caused additional despair and anger among the householders, and locals put a row of cones across the ends of Joll Road with a sign saying ‘Residents Only’. A security guard kept watch each night on the eerily quiet street.

The housing inspectors had visited our friends’ house and it had been red-stickered, meaning that no one was allowed to enter it. A red coloured piece of paper with writing on it was taped on the wall by the front door; it looked very official but no one around knew what it actually meant. Apparently a sewerage pipe had been wrecked further up the stream, and so the water and silt that came through was possibly contaminated, and termed ‘black water’, so we shouldn’t have even been in the house. That piece of paper was a bit late for us; all I could think of was that if the house was to be demolished I had wasted all my energy in the bathroom yesterday. [Chuckle] Since I couldn’t work inside I set myself a task outside, removing the layer of silt off every potted plant on the property, starting with the many hostas.

Out on Joll Road during the day there was a hive of noisy activity which would go on for another two weeks or more – people, vehicles, machines, brooms and shovels. Locals and complete strangers had arrived from all over the place to volunteer to help, and there was a constant flow of people coming and going, moving destroyed items out onto the verge. Flooded cars sat where they were for days until the insurance companies could organise their removal. Tow trucks, chains and manpower helped move these immobile hunks of metal onto transporters and trailers. The road was scraped of silt by large machines, which was taken away on large trucks. Piles of householders’ belongings and silt in separate piles had started to mount up, and these had gotten so big they were encroaching out onto the road. Instructions were given to keep the silt away from the gutters, as if it rained again this would block the stormwater drains which were already overloaded. A blue Portaloo was placed beside our friends’ driveway, which was very handy for all.

A lovely local woman had rounded up some friends and family and set up an outside cafe. Every day two trestle tables were loaded with donated pizzas, filled rolls, sandwiches, fruit, baking, drinks, and tea and coffee. It was an amazing asset for all the workers who needed constant refuelling as they toiled away. Children were sent down the street with boxes and baskets of food to hand out to those who just wouldn’t stop. Local food businesses also donated and delivered meals for those that needed them each afternoon, and a food drop-off station was set up at a local’s house for distribution. Ladies would drive by and yell out, “Would you like some food?” And we’d say “Yes”, or “No thanks.”

The power was restored in the afternoon to our streets. All day we’d had reports from others that they’d heard that such-and-such an area had power, and so-and-so has had theirs on for hours. Then street by street the power got closer to ours, and then our phones worked. We headed home tired and filthy that afternoon; gumboots kicked off, clothes in the tub to soak before washing, and a shower, which was a pattern to be repeated for the next few weeks.

Thursday

Our friends headed down to their house, and Megan and I decided to have a morning at home. A beautiful Afghanistani [Afghan] carpet had been covered in silt, and I told my friends that I would take care of it; they had enough on their hands. I phoned some carpet cleaning companies for advice, but they all said they didn’t deal with anything that had been in black water. So I laid it out on our sloping driveway, and hosed it down both sides, then gave it a gentle wash using a wool wash solution and a soft nylon brush. I laid the carpet on an old tablecloth to dry while out in the sun, but once it was dry silt dust kept falling out of it. [The] only thing to do was to hang it over the deck railing and gently beat it the old fashioned way. Now it’s rolled up waiting to go home.

There were lots of requests on Facebook for clothes and shoes etcetera to be donated, as many people were rescued from their homes in only what they were wearing. We searched through our belongings and put together a few bags of items. Peak Practice doctors’ rooms were a collection point in the village, and so Megan dropped them down there. She popped into the New World supermarket and found there was no bread or flour on the shelves … memories of Covid lockdown.

I headed back down to our friends’ house and joined in with a team of strangers boxing up hundreds of our friends’ book collection. Five hours later we ran out of boxes, and so the call went out on Facebook for more cardboard boxes; every so often a person would come to the front door with armloads more. “Thank you – just put them over there.” The boxes of books were placed in a car and driven along the road to be stored at another friend’s house who had plenty of storage space. Unfortunately, all the books that were on the bottom shelves of the book cases were write-offs; each was photographed for insurance replacement purposes, then put out on the street with all the rubbish.

Friday

In the morning both Megan and I headed down the road to carry on packing books into boxes. There were plenty of volunteers helping so I decided to go outside and continue clearing silt off pots. The silt around the vege beds was twenty-five centimetres deep, and gumboots were hard to keep on due to the silt squelching and sucking at them. I perched on an upturned paint bucket, and dealt with each pot individually. The silt went in a bucket beside me; the plant was held upside down and its leaves were washed of silt in a second bucket, and then topped up with fresh potting mix. The water connection to the house was unaffected, but we still kept water use to a minimum on the property as the silt was beginning to dry out a bit, and any water on it kept it gluggy. There were volunteers working in the garden all around me, each person selecting an area to tackle; there were two rock gardens, a cacti collection, roses and garden beds to clear of silt; stray plant labels to collect as well as stray bulbs and numerous empty plastic plant pots to stack.

Our friends had lost their freezer full of food but had saved a large piece of steak that they had been given. It was a huge slab of meat, and we talked about having a luscious steak dinner that night after Megan had collected it from another friend’s fridge. Megan duly set to and made dinner that night, cutting off large slices of the steak; we sat around the table in anticipation, then discovered it was [as] tough as old boots, as the saying goes. There was no label on the meat so no one knew what kind it was. We had a good laugh that night, and the dog had extra leftovers.

[Saturday]

I resolved to cook the rest of the meat the following day so as not to waste it. I made two casseroles to put in the freezer, one in the slow cooker and one in the oven.

Then I went down the road and spent from ten ‘til four-thirty cleaning potted plants. Lots of volunteers turned up every day, some armed with spades, and others offering to do anything helpful. Most of the silt off [on] the paths of the property was steadily removed, and at about three o’clock the yell went up, “It’s the Navy!” And a “Hooray!” Which really lifted people’s spirits. The New Zealand Navy was in town for Art Deco Weekend, but of course that had been cancelled so this meant that we had about a dozen young men and women arrive and roll their sleeves up to help, filling wheelbarrows with silt off the properties and out to the road to the silt piles. One Navy guy had music blaring from his back pocket as he shovelled away, grooving away to the beat.

Sunday

As I had things to catch up on in the morning I headed back down to the house after lunch, and continued the cleaning of pot plants. Word spread down the street that Pipi Cafe was putting on free pizza and wine for victims and volunteers, so our friends went down with their relatives from Wellington who had driven up to come and help for a couple of days. They were also staying at our house. Megan and I decided to have a quiet night at home, and ate some very tasty moussaka that’d been cooked and handed out from Bellatino’s [Food Lovers Market] in the village. Later that evening Barney’s mum phoned to say she’d come off her bike and had a wrist injury, so Megan packed up Barney and his belongings to drive over to Napier to help her friend and spend the night – as if there wasn’t enough already happening.

Monday

Joll Road was almost empty. Any volunteers that [who] worked had headed back today, and so it was a case of house-owners and retired volunteers. The cafe was no longer operating, but women still drove past offering food. Thankfully, the weather had been warm and sunny since the cyclone, which helped with the drying out of the properties. Some houses had already been stripped out of wallboards, floors, carpets etcetera, and doors and windows were left open every day. The silt under the houses was a problem for some – those with headroom managed to remove the silt; others with low crawl spaces didn’t know what to do. It was pretty quiet on the street, and it gave us all a chance to survey the damage, check what had been achieved and what still needed to be done, then we continued our work.

Tuesday

Another day just like the last one, working away at our self-chosen jobs, coming together to eat and returning to our work. A week ago it was a case of despair, ‘Where do we start?’ And now, as little achievements have been made, ‘That’s been cleared, I can start on this now.’ A friend from down the road offered to set up his tripod and photograph the covers of all the ruined books; the insurance company had demanded that anything to be claimed on needed to be photographed, so he set to and spent over two days doing the task.

At 5 pm a car pulled up outside, and friends had made and brought dinner for the street. They opened the boot, and there was fresh roast beef, coleslaw, buns, chutneys, and best of all, beer. Word was spread along the street, and suddenly families with children and couples with dogs appeared out of damaged houses to enjoy the fresh food and talk about their shared experiences of being flooded … commiserations for those uninsured; battles with insurance companies; lack of support and lack of knowledge. We got home that night and our friends were carrying a bottle of wine and a small supermarket cake – it was their wedding anniversary, so we all charged out glasses and wished them well.

Wednesday

We spent the morning at home catching up on washing and cleaning, then Megan and I drove to the racecourse, where HUHANZ [Helping You Help Animals New Zealand] was setting up as the place to take cyclone-rescued and lost pets. We dropped off some pet food, but they didn’t need our old blankets as they had enough. We did a couple of hours at the house, then headed home. The property had accumulated an array of misplaced tools over the – mainly shovels, plus three wheelbarrows – so I photographed them and put the photos onto the local Facebook page. Little by little people recognised that they were missing something, and eventually most tools were reclaimed by their owners.

Volunteers had dropped away by now, some heading off to help on other properties, and it was just the homeowners left to deal with the leftover silt, deal with insurance claims and get sewerage and water lines fixed.

Thursday

I spent the day cleaning plants as usual, but as it rained all day I ended up working under the shelter of the deck. I arrived home wet and muddy as I always walked to and from the house – five minutes. This turned out to be my last full day down there. I had cleaned over three hundred individual plants, and could see that almost all were going to survive. My mission was complete.

By this point I was extremely exhausted; I was having bad dreams; I needed to stop and look at getting back to my own routines. I hadn’t stopped from when I arrived back in New Zealand after two months away being a brand new grandmother. I hadn’t had time to relish that gorgeous wee being back in Australia; it was a whirlwind of despair, patience, devastation, hard work, encouragement, laughter, pain, frustration and understanding that ground me down. I didn’t want to hear any more sad stories or anger about the situation – I wanted my life back.

It was two months before our friends and a large pile of their suitcases and boxes finally left our house for a rental. It will be many more months before they can move back into their home.