Cyclone Gabrielle: Damaged section of SH2 on East Coast won’t have two lanes for 14 months

By Alexa Cook at RNZ

East Coast residents will need to brace for at least another 14 months of closures on State Highway 2, as the cyclone-damaged section of the road between Napier and Wairoa won’t have two lanes open until next Christmas.

The four-and-a-half kilometre stretch of road, known as the “Devil’s Elbow”, has 15 major construction sites along it after the deluge from Cyclone Gabrielle caused catastrophic damage.

By the time it fully reopens, it will have been nearly three years since the cyclone hit.

The once-peaceful stretch of bush-clad road is a hive of activity, crowded with excavators, trucks and workers.

It has come a long way in 19 months, since Cyclone Gabrielle brought down massive chunks of hillside and contractors had to dig a two-metre-high tunnel through the mud and debris.

Transport Rebuild East Coast (TREC) Hawke’s Bay area manager Andrew Shannon said a key weakness for many of the damaged sites in the region was that the bridge approaches had been chewed out by floodwaters, so strengthening them had been a focus.

“That’s why we’ve got a magnum stone wall there, to stop that,” he said.

Shannon had some confidence that the work they were doing would withstand future cyclones.

“If it was the same magnitude, then I’m reasonably confident but who knows what the magnitude might be... and we don’t know what the restrictions are likely to be upstream as well,” he said.

Roadworks and temporary speed limits at Devil's Elbow, between Napier and Wairoa. Photo / Warren Buckland

The second phase of fixing this section of SH2 is about to begin, with most sites to the south of Devil’s Elbow.

Senior project manager Tony King said “Project I” was the largest and most complex.

King said there was about four months’ worth of work removing the unsuitable material, followed by about six to eight months of construction. “So we should be there for probably another 12 months.”

It is known as the “Devil’s Corner”, where Cyclone Gabrielle caused a 40m-long and 10m-high underslip that significantly damaged the southbound lane of SH2.

Work is expected to start at the end of this year and will require the road to be closed overnight so crews can get larger chunks of work completed more efficiently.

“There’ll be overnight closures over the next year as we build structures up – especially as we come to ‘tie in’ the ends and do the big drainage upgrades that are required,” King said.

‘It’s a marathon’

There are no detours available – unless you want to drive over to the Bay of Plenty then across into Gisborne – which will add at least four hours to your trip.

Tūtira farmer Paul Harris told RNZ that while the fixes were necessary, it had been a headache for everyone.

“We often have five sets of traffic lights between us and town, and then you’ve got the closures on top of that – what a disruption for 40km of road,” he said.

Harris said the closures have a big impact locally, especially for truck drivers carrying freight to and from Gisborne, dairy farm workers, meatworkers in Wairoa and parents bringing kids home from sports.

“It’s gone on for a long time. We’re realising this cyclone is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s dragging on and on.

NZTA and Transport Rebuild East Coast have a series of extensive road works continuing along the stretch of SH2 south at Devil's Elbow as they work to put the road back together after Cyclone Gabrielle.

“Often you can come through at night and there is nothing happening. Everyone appreciates the road being rebuilt but they don’t appreciate the disruption to lives, which is unnecessary.”

Harris said it was causing problems for those trying to get workers up from Napier.

“That uncertainty leads to us becoming the last on the list for tradies, it also leads to uncertainty. Particularly this time of year coming into summer there’s a lot of casual rural staff driving in daily... anyone working from outside might come do two or three days in Tūtira, and they’re reluctant to come,” he said.

But NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) project manager Richard Bayley said closing the road was not a decision they made lightly, and a lot of planning went into it.

“We can have night closures where we pack in a lot of work. What we could get done over three or four nights of night closures might take eight weeks without them,” Bayley said.

“It’s disruptive in the short term, but it does allow for less disruption in the long term.”

The road will be closed in both directions overnight for five nights from Sunday 3 November until Thursday 7 November, 9pm to 5am each night.

- RNZ