Cyclone Gabrielle – Jennifer and Peter Bennett

Hello, I’m Denise McBride. Today is 10th March 2025. I’m interviewing Jenny and Peter Bennett about their experience of having their property flooded due to Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023. Can you describe the weather on the night the cyclone struck?

Jennifer Bennett: Like a lot of other New Zealanders we were very aware of Cyclone Gabrielle approaching New Zealand. It’d been in the news for two or three days that it was likely to cause some damage, particularly up in the northern areas of New Zealand. As Cyclone Gabrielle got closer and closer, it became evident that Hawke’s Bay and probably Gisborne areas would also be impacted. At that point we weren’t really worried that we were going to be impacted greatly; I remember talking to [a] friend from Wairarapa that evening – she’d called to say, “How are you feeling with Gabrielle approaching you? Do you feel threatened?” And I said, “Well, we got through [Cyclone] Bola many years earlier.” The creek behind us hadn’t got beyond two-thirds full then, and even if we had more rain, I didn’t see it would likely be an issue with us.

I’m not sure at what time the early stages of Cyclone Gabrielle were impacting on us, but I do remember the evening; the rain had started and the wind had got up to being quite gusty and quite worrying. We do have a lot of trees on our property and it’s always a concern in heavy winds that branches or limbs will come down. It must’ve been near midnight, Peter went out the front or something … can’t recall whether it was just to check trees because we had a big tree at the front … and we discovered a branch had come down from the manuka. So here we were just after midnight out in the pouring rain, heavy wind, worrying about the fagus which at that stage was still standing upright, trying to clear the branch off the drive and feeling quite chuffed that it had managed to fall between the two cars and not cause any damage. “Oh, isn’t that very considerate of it?” Little did we know [chuckle] what was going to cause more damage in the morning. We got that cleared, must’ve dragged the log off the drive because it wasn’t there when we were being evacuated the next day. We headed off to bed, couldn’t sleep very well because of the noise – it was heavy rain, heavy wind.

‘Bout two o’clock [I] recall this massive graunching sound, which we put down to a walnut tree that had fallen across the creek and it was overhanging the next door neighbours’ swimming pool.

Peter: Several weeks ago.

Jennifer: Yeah, that’d been over the creek; and council had removed some branches, but had basically left it there. So when this big noise happened we thought, ‘Well, it must be that walnut tree being uprooted.’ We then became aware there were flashing lights somewhere; got up to discover three or four fire engines out on the roadside and down the neighbouring drive, and they were busy pumping water but we couldn’t tell what was going on. We subsequently heard that the next-door neighbours over the drive had called them because they had water coming up their toilet and presumably flooding into their bathroom. And so they were advised to evacuate, as were the people behind – I don’t know whether they had water in the house at that stage or not.

We were standing out at the door. No-one from the fire brigade came and sort-of said anything to us, so we were in the dark … well, we weren’t in the dark at that point because the power was still on. We decided we might as well have a cup of coffee because we’re not sleeping. Turned the kettle on, and the instant it boiled – bang! The power went out – off for however many days it was … well [a] month in our case. So we got our cup of coffee and [a] little while after that the fire engines all disappeared. We discovered the trees had come down over the power lines just up the road. So we headed back to bed; must’ve got a bit of sleep; I’m not sure how.

You got up about … bit after six, quarter past six, went out to the kitchen, looked in the garage which is at ground level compared to our house, which is a metre or so above the ground; realised that there was water in the garage and came back to alert me that we had water in the garage and water in the garden. Sound[s] that hard [chuckle] to sort of believe until I looked out the door. Came out to the back door, noticed our next-door neighbour and his son were out there, and he called over to me. He said, “What are you going to do? Are you going to evacuate?” And I said, “Well, it’s not going to get any higher than this, surely.” I thought it was just water lying from excess water, and not the result of the dam going or anything like that.

Wise words. Within fifteen, twenty minutes or so, [we] suddenly realised the water had risen a metre, or near on a metre, and was coming into the back room which is our bedroom. And when that started happening, it was just like … unreal … “Is this happening to us?” Because we didn’t expect to be flooded; we hadn’t prepared a bag or anything, so it was a question of quickly grab the few essential things. Got dressed, put on clean trousers – that was the thing that amused me, putting on clean trousers to wade waist deep. That’s how your brain works in these situations. [Chuckle] Grabbed my handbag, my laptop, and I think a change of clothes and medication, and that was about it, wasn’t it?

Peter: Mmm. Well ‘bout all we had time for.

Jennifer: Well you left your phone on the chair, ‘cause …

Peter: That’s right, I did too.

Jennifer: Yeah, you didn’t have a phone. I remember running around; I went into one of the bedrooms where I had lots of genealogy stuff and lifting those boxes up onto the bed. They were boxes of old photos that I’d got from Dad’s cousin in England – all put on the bed; all in vain because they got tossed out by the guys ripping up the carpet – told not to touch anything, and just dumped irreplaceable items. It still upsets me horribly. But anyway, I remember doing that as we were getting ready to go; so lifted those things up. I don’t know what else we did – I remember we were trying to ring our daughter in Auckland, and luckily we managed to get hold of her, didn’t we?

Peter: Mmm. That was before we left, yes.

Jennifer: Yeah. That was about seven o’clock. We managed to get hold of Catherine and say, “We’re having to evacuate, the house is under water.” And we were on the phone to her as we heard the bridge that crossed the stream beside us go under, or go down. There was this almighty racket. I think we had trouble hearing because it was just so noisy. Did we guess that it was the bridge at that point?

Peter: No, I don’t think we knew at that time that it was definitely the bridge, but …

Jennifer: But we knew that something big had happened out there. And almost at that same time our next-door neighbour burst in and said …

Peter: “We’re here to get you out.” [Chuckle]

Jennifer: Yep; “You’re the last people left here on Joll Road – we need you to be evacuated.” And he said, “I’ve got some of the other guys from the road here to help.” And so I had my backpack, my laptop, and my hand[bag] – mightily ridiculous – and I had my hiking stick, that’s right, ‘cause I thought I’d need that to help walk up the road. Stepped down, and I could not believe the torrent of water. It was … it was horrendous, is all I can say. I remember grabbing my neighbour, I think around the waist or whatever. One of the other guys took one or two of my bags from me, ‘cause I knew I wasn’t going to be able to cope with that flow of the water. As we passed the cars, something leant on it, and [we] realised the car was floating. The car was moving round in the water. Yeah, it was floating. That walk up to the hill … how far is that up there?

Peter: Couple hundred metres.

Jennifer: Couple hundred metres, was just nightmarish; uphill. Yeah.

Peter: Down towards town.

Jennifer: Towards the village, to get above the water, it was just such a torrent. And we got up there, and the neighbour that had rescued us – after they evacuated they’d slept up the road in their van. They’d got their cars out, and they said, “Here, take our car and make use of that.” And then it was … “Well, what do we do?” Do you wish to add ..?

Peter: No, I can’t really add more at the moment.

Jennifer: ‘Cause I feel as though I’ve said lots.

Peter: Yeah. Yeah.

Would you like to take it on from ..?

Peter: Well at that point it was, “Where do we go?” And we thought, ‘Oh well, we’ll go to the library’, because we understood it was a …

Jennifer: Community hub.

Peter: … hub for things like this.

Is that the Havelock North Library?

Havelock North Library, yes, but we found out it wasn’t.

Jennifer: Well, we drove there and there was nothing …

Peter: Nothing there. No-one there.

Jennifer: So we went down to the fire station.

Peter: Fire brigade, and there was a person there … a fireman there, but he was getting ready to go home because he’d been out all night.

Jennifer: And didn’t he say he would come back?

Peter: He advised he would come back to us, but we went back to the library. We were sort of wondering what to do then. Sometime later the manager of the library came and opened up; not for us, but just to …

Jennifer: No, it was the manager of the community …

Peter: The community centre, yes, sorry … came and opened up. Wasn’t for us, she [was] going to check things out I think, or something. But she found that the community hub was in town at the Sports Centre.

Jennifer: And suggested we drive in there. So we get in there, and it was very much – they had no idea what was going on.

Peter: Well they did know there was flooding, and they were expecting people, but they didn’t know what; how much …

Jennifer: Yeah. ‘Cause I suspect a lot of the flooding out the other side of Hastings hadn’t happened, or hadn’t hit them as being a problem. I mean, we arrived and we were told, “Well there’s a couple of French women who were sleeping in the [a] van out at Haumoana; they’re in the hall part, asleep.” And [they] said, “You’re welcome to go and make yourself at home on one of the mats in there.”

Peter: Gym mats.

Jennifer: On the gym mat. I looked horrified, and thought, ‘Well I wouldn’t get up again if I got down on that.’ So we sat on the benches – I don’t know how long – like stunned mullets.

Peter: We did get a cup of coffee or two.

Jennifer: Eventually, yeah. But it was quite some time, and it was like … we just didn’t know what to do or where to go.

Peter: There wasn’t anywhere to go.

Jennifer: And it was while we were outside the public library in Havelock, I remember managing to get a message through to your sister, and I don’t know if I said much, I can’t recall. And yeah, it was some hours later it became obvious that there was a lot more flooding in the district, because they were setting up food stands and things.

Peter: They were going to get food in, and …

Jennifer: And I think it was about at that point when Megan came and said, “I’ve been trying to find you”, and sort of took us under her wing, which we just … I don’t know; we must’ve been like …

Peter: We were shell-shocked.

Jennifer: We were shell-shocked, I think. And even our local mayor had arrived as we were walking out, and she took one look at me, and she said, “Are you impacted?” And I just … I think I just nodded. I was so sort of … yeah. It was unreal what was happening to us. It’s sort of hard to describe your emotions; you see news reports and that, but you’d never dream or think that it’s going to impact like that on your own life. And I would never underestimate the power of water now. It’s just scary how strong that water was. It was just a torrent out there.

How long have you lived in this house?

Peter: Is it forty-two years?

Jennifer: Forty-two years … forty-two years. Never had water lying on our property or anything.

Peter: Or flowing through it.

Jennifer: We had seen at times heavy downpours, water out on the road, but it generally flowed down the neighbouring drive or into the neighbouring property; into their place, but we were slightly higher. And so it never, ever felt we were at risk. Yeah.

Peter: And to be fair that previous time that it flowed into the neighbour’s property, it had come from across the road because there used to be the paddocks there and they were quite low-lying. And so it wasn’t from our stream behind us, it was from the gully across the road.

Jennifer: Whereas this was water from the stream. And then obviously, it got blocked with tree trunks and other debris that had come down as a result of Gabrielle.

When did you start the cleanup?

I think we came down to the house that afternoon … on the Tuesday afternoon, and realised the water had drained away. So it drained away very quickly, but what hit us hard was if it had only been water damage it might’ve been easier to deal with. It was the silt that had been deposited. And I know you got your phone that afternoon, but I don’t think we did much that afternoon, did we?

Peter: I think we were too stunned [chuckle] even then. And what could we do? I mean …

Jennifer: There was nothing we could do. And then when we arrived the next day, initially the council was going round. We got slapped with a red sticker. Peter: So in theory we shouldn’t’ve been staying in the house at all.

Jennifer: Yeah. But they did say, “Oh, well you’re allowed to go in and get stuff.” So it was almost contradictory to what …

Peter: What a red sticker was supposed to mean.

What did what did the red sticker mean?

Jennifer: That you’re not allowed to enter the property whatsoever.

Because of ..?

Damage.

Peter: Flooding and black water.

Jennifer: Yeah, there was black water risk. I think at least three sewage pipes between our place and up to Tanner Street had ruptured or been damaged, so the water was deemed black water. But I don’t know how many properties were labelled as ‘red’ at that point, but it was a sort of … oh, well you’re allowed to get stuff out. And I think it was … first, trying to even get to the front door because …

Peter: It was thick silt.

Jennifer: The silt in the drive was just like … it was thick with mud. It was shocking. And I don’t know how long it took umpteen guys digging silt out, just to make the access to the house more …

Peter: Readily …

Jennifer: … available.

Peter: So then we could look at getting it out of the house.

Jennifer: And it must’ve been ‘bout forty-eight hours later the council turned up again – by this time we had started trying to clear some of the stuff – and they reassessed the rating and we were changed from red sticker to yellow, which meant you could come in for limited periods of time. So at least we felt a little bit more able to come and try and clear.

People seemed to turn up from everywhere – complete strangers – to assist, which was great; but in hindsight some of the assistance we couldn’t control and things got thrown out that shouldn’t’ve been.

Peter: But then we didn’t know where to put anything.

Jennifer: I know, but the thing that hurts most are some of the old photos from England; but Dad’s River Plate photo albums, and photo albums from Canada, his childhood years; plus I think his Navy war medals were in boxes that got dumped. They should never, ever have been; they would not have been put … And it was just that we lost control over what people were dumping. And I still have … I’d say probably ninety-five percent of my nights I would wake at some point and be going over stuff that has, even now – two years – that still haunts me.

The week after was, God …

Peter: Hectic. [Chuckle]

Jennifer: Hectic; it’s not something that I would want to repeat [or] wish upon anyone. It was wonderful, the help that we had.

Peter: And the offers to look after things for us.

Jennifer: Yes. There was the people coming in to help, plus we had two places where we were able to store our possessions that we could salvage – one, a neighbour who we knew, but they lived up on the hill, so they were fine; and another, [a] complete stranger – we were able to store some of our bigger items in their garage. But it was the rush of people to come and box up kitchen items, pack up books, pack up all sorts of things, washing clothing, washing all sorts of things. They were taking them away and cleaning stuff for us. There was a big army of people that came and helped in the garden and round the property.

I think it was on the second day or so, the Navy had been coming to the Art Deco weekend in Napier that following weekend, so on the Friday, and that had been cancelled. And so [a] lot of the naval crew were diverted to helping in the community. And I remember, I think we were having a much-needed tea break on the deck when suddenly there was this dozen or so naval people marching in, much to the delight of many of the females, [chuckle] at these young males [chuckle] coming in to help. And they just got stuck in, helping to clear out our old garage, which had a whole lot of stuff stored in there; our firewood etcetera; garden tools, countless things. But of course, being at the back of the property, it got hit hard with silt, as did the vege garden. And that was one of the hardest things, was being February it was in the heart of the summer vege growing time. I’d actually spent the afternoon before freezing beans from the garden … put at least three great big bags of beans into the freezer, to have it all just dumped out on the roadside along with all the rest of the contents of the freezer.

Peter: And the freezer. [Chuckle]

Jennifer: But all the vegetables in the garden were just ruined. The only thing that was standing upright were the asparagus canes. I’m not sure how they managed to stand upright, but everything else was just ruined. And the Navy guys just got in and dug silt and dug silt and more silt.

Peter: And wheeled it out to the front of the property.

Jennifer: Along with many other volunteers and helpers, carefully, ‘cause we’re keen gardeners, helping to dig away the silt from around plants. I don’t know how we got through. Despite this, we had several offers of people with diggers coming and saying, “We can just come in with a digger and clear it all for you.” I think if we’d gone ahead with that, it would’ve ruined us not having our garden, or the backbone of our garden, to restore.

Peter: They would’ve had to knock down a lot of shrubs and trees and things like that to do it, and that would’ve just wrecked the garden.

Jennifer: And probably wrecked our spirits and everything as well. It was just … horrible, horrible, horrible. I don’t know how long it took us – a good week probably, to just clear the house of everything.

And [of] course the other thing was part of the insurance requirements [were] we had to keep a log of everything. They wanted to know the contents of our freezer; wanted to know what was being …

Peter: Dumped.

Jennifer: So going through the heartache of tossing these things, we had to record it all for them, which was hard.

Peter: And perhaps the worst of it was all our books that were ruined, and there’s hundreds of those that we had to document. And then value them.

Jennifer: It was just like … [an] endless job, going through all that. And then once we got past that with the things put into storage … well, where do we go to start getting the house sorted? There was very little guidance, and it was really just the neighbours, talking with them. I must admit, the one good thing is we’ve got to know our neighbours extremely well, and we realise how lucky we are to have such a great bunch of people in our neighbourhood. And it was, “Well, how are you going about doing this? What are you doing?” That we sort of bumbled our way through things. And even with, like, getting the insurance builders; and they weren’t much help, were they?

Peter: Not really. They did an assessment and took photos of everything to give them an idea of what was damaged and what-have-you.

Jennifer: They took some of the GIB board, but not on both sides of walls, which …

Peter: Yep. They only took a … it was about two hundred millimetres up from the floor of GIB on one side of each wall, to allow it to dry out, whereas most people would take both sides – or the builders reckon both sides should’ve been done.

Jennifer: Yeah. Well one of the houses that we had stuff stored at was a builder that [who] had worked on our place years earlier when we had the additions put on. And I remember he was very helpful, he and his son, in helping to clear the house as well. And then [at a] later stage he was shocked at how little the assigned builder from the insurance company had done. And then – I mean we had to wait for the house to dry out.

Peter: Well, it was water-blasted first.

Jennifer: But even with just the minimal GIB board we were sort of puzzled as to why things were slow to dry out, but there wouldn’t have been the air movement. And there was no real guidance on what we had to do with the silt underneath.

Peter: In fact that was one of the issues to us, is that it was hard for the house to dry out ‘cause there was wet silt underneath the house … about [a] hundred and fifty millimetres of it.

Jennifer: And thick … depth. In the end, you got under it.

Peter: I got under it to take some of it out, and we got some help from some friends and some volunteers. And we took a lot of it out; it had to be done by trays of mud wheeled out on a little trolley.

Jennifer: ‘Cause it was surprisingly heavy; like, we’d have a box which was … what size?

Peter: 200 x 100 mm.

Jennifer: And that was about as much as you could carry, ‘cause it’s waterlogged.

Peter: That’s all you could lift underneath the [?] ‘cause you’re not standing up, you’re on your side. That’s about all you can lift.

So you were in under the house lying on your side, scraping into the little boxes.

Jennifer: Digging.

Peter: Spadeful by spade … well, we had a little shovel. Yep.

Jennifer: Because we weren’t really sure. Some people were told that we’d have to take our floors out. And several of us, ‘cause of the vintage of our houses, would have wooden floors. And I remember having [a] conversation with two or three people … “Well, I’m not ripping up my native timber floorboards.” One neighbour, they just got right in, ripped the floorboards out, whereas I think the next-door neighbours and us and another friend, we kept ours.

Peter: Well they’re matai.

Jennifer: So it was question getting in under the house, and then building that wall [chuckle] – it was a silt wall outside the property. And then it was sort of months and months; we were in no man’s land, weren’t we?

Peter: Mmm. Just waiting for something to happen or not happen, or trying to sort out when we would get paid or what we were getting paid.

Jennifer: But even dealing with the insurance – we put in the claim for the contents, and it was replaceable [replacement] value, wasn’t it?

Peter: Oh, yes – originally they said, “Oh, we’ll value it”, but then they came back and said, “You have to value it as replacement value.”

Jennifer: No, we put what we’d spent, you know, the cost of things.

Peter: Yeah. They originally said, “What was the cost?”

Jennifer: And then we had to re0do the whole thing with how much to replace. And a lot of the items were irreplaceable, so how do you put a value? And then it was sort of waiting or waiting on the insurance builder. And it was a fortuitous that the council had offered some assistance. I think it was for damage on your land, wasn’t it? Something to do with the fences. There’s a woman in the council [who] suggested getting one of our local builders to give us a quote on the fence. So he was doing work for [speaking together] one of the neighbours’ properties, so we got him to come in. And he said, “Oh, do you mind if I have a look at your house?” And he was horrified to see how little of the GIB board had been removed, and he said,” Oh, do you mind if I give you a quote for what I could do?” Because we were getting no traction from the builder assigned. And we got the quote from him, and it was only then that the assigned builder … “Oh, well I need to just come and check one or two things”, and then, of course, came in and put in a quote underneath, but had left several items off.

Peter: Which we’d discussed while he was here.

Jennifer: It was things like the hot water cupboard and various cupboards.

Peter: He left the dishwasher out.

Jennifer: Yes, there was a whole raft of things, and in the end the insurance was okay with us to go with the friendly builder that [who] had offered to do the fence. I’d hate to think how long we would’ve been waiting if we’d had to go through the assigned builder ‘cause we had been lucky with friends that [who] had offered us accommodation for a couple of months which we’re ever so grateful for, ‘cause, I don’t know, we must’ve been like a couple of …

Peter: [Chuckle] Lost fish.

… lost fish or something. [Chuckles] I don’t know how they put up with us. [Chuckles] And we managed to get accommodation in an Airbnb place on the edge of Havelock …

Peter: At a good rate.

Jennifer: … reasonable rate, which was like a little home from home, but we were aware that we could only have it up until the October. So that put pressure on the builder, and he was aware that we were going to be homeless and worked hard to get the house so that we could move back in.

Peter: Even if it was camping. [Chuckle]

Jennifer: It was camping ‘cause we had no kitchen, we had the toilet, we had a shower, and we had water in the laundry. No vanity unit, no water in the kitchen [chuckle] for a few weeks. It’s amazing what you can do – in theory, probably we weren’t meant to be there because we were still yellow-stickered, [chuckle] and we were still yellow-stickered until … ‘bout halfway through the next year I think it was that the council actually came back and had to do an assessment to make sure that the house was up to the standard of being able to be lived in; even though we’d been living in there for about eight months.

Peter: Having told us we’re not supposed to be living in there and [chuckle] if we’re [Category] 2[c] … [chuckle] well, we’re yellow-stickered. Yeah. [Chuckles]

Jennifer: So I’m just trying to think if there’s any other little bits of pieces to add. [Sigh] This is an experience that I would not wish on anyone. It took me a long time to sleep at night when rain was falling. And even now I get quite anxious if [there’s] heavy wind or rain, it just freaks me out. The one thing I would say, be very aware of what you have insured. You think, oh, you don’t need it; but I would hate for anyone to go through this nightmare without insurance. One of our elderly neighbours didn’t have their property insured, and I just felt so sad for them.

Contents – we realised that we were underinsured, and probably one piece of advice would be [to] go around once a year, take a video or photos of each of the rooms in your house so that you’ve got a summary of what you’ve got. Because if you were burnt – mind you, if your house is burnt the record probably goes up in the flames. But put the record up in the cloud or somewhere [chuckle] … I don’t know where you put it. But certainly be aware of what the value[s] of your items are and what things are irreplaceable. And that’s the hardest thing, losing things that you know you can’t replace.

Peter: And they’re not necessarily valuable to anybody else, they’re valuable to you and your family.

Well, thank-you very much, Jenny and Peter, for your input this afternoon. And I know it hasn’t been easy for you to think back on all these horrible things that have happened to you. But yeah, onwards and upwards, eh?

Jennifer: One or two things that I just thought of – I failed to mention the wonderful support we had from various people who came with food and hot drinks. And a local woman set up a cafe; it was labelled ‘The French Cafe’, down the road, and from that kept all the helpers and us poor residents filled with food and hot drinks. I just don’t know how we would’ve got through without these people. And even for quite some time after, Peter and I would come down from where we were staying, sit on our deck because that’s the only place we would be able to sit, contemplating the mess [chuckle] …

Peter: And what we were doing.

Jennifer: And every so often, somebody would drop by with some filled rolls or something. It’s no wonder we’ve probably put [chuckle] on a bit of weight or something with all this.

Peter: And it was the support for people, and just coming talk to us even. And that was really good.

Jennifer: The support of people; and also the neighbours there, I think, helped us. ‘Cause we were all in the same boat there, and I think we kept each other sort of afloat [chuckle] or whatever, or happy. Yeah, it’s been a long road, and even now – just jumping onto that silt, it would be so lovely if we could say that all the silt was gone. It took me eighteen, twenty months to face my glasshouse and clear out the silt from that. It is now functioning beautifully most of the time, but there are corners of the garden that still have silt to haunt us. And we’re still fighting to get out of our Category 2c; hopefully in the next few months we’ll be able to go down to Grade 1, or whatever. But we hope and dream.

So what does Category 2c entail?

Basically we’re dependent on the council doing remedial work to lessen the risk of future …

Peter: Work on the stream in particular.

Jennifer: So they have to provide evidence or do the work required to satisfy …

Peter: The Regional Council.

Jennifer: Or government that this work has been undertaken.

Peter: Or will be undertaken – we don’t know quite which it’s going to be.