She was part of 12 volunteer firefighters out on the streets, who went in opposite directions to help the flooding community.
Whiting, a station officer at the time of the cyclone, told Hawke’s Bay Today two years after rescues involving families, animals and near-miss experiences with her crew, she wouldn’t have done anything differently.
Waipawa firefighters checked on properties in flooded areas during Cyclone Gabrielle on February 14, 2023.
“We had significant flooding and the water in the rivers had come up and the lower end of Waipawa had broken the stopbanks.”
She said her first major rescue was near the River Park Event Centre in Waipawa, to help a family stuck inside a home, unable to be reached due to the high water level.
It eventually became too dangerous and the firefighters had to retreat further back to safety.
“The hardest thing was to think that family are in there and they are seeing us withdraw and they don’t know what we are doing.”
Whiting said a child of the family, who was eventually rescued by helicopter, came to speak with her afterwards as they transported them to safety.
“One of the little girls said ‘we saw you leave’, and she was crying, and I started crying, and said ‘No we weren’t leaving you darling, we were waiting here for you’.
“It broke my heart.”
Whiting said she and her crew came close to being stranded with the fire truck they were in when they faced a difficult decision to cross a rural bridge near Ōtāne as flood waters rose and debris washed down.
“Coming towards us was a big shipping container and it was moving at pace. As the driver, I said to one of the firefighters ‘I am just going to put my foot down’”.
“We didn’t want to be on the bridge when it hit, we didn’t want it to hit before because it would have meant we wouldn’t have been able to get back.”
Waipawa firefighter Theresa Whiting drove through the Cyclone Gabrielle flood waters in the fire truck to rescue people.
Whiting said they made it across the bridge and five minutes later they received a message on the radio to tell them the shipping container had destroyed the bridge.
Like the rest of the region, the firefighters faced an additional challenge when the communications went down.
Whiting and her crew were left unable to contact each other or their comms team and from then on they were reliant on the locals.
She said they responded to information and tips from the public, civil defence, and police about people needing help, as they went about their door-knocks.
“We were completely reliant on local knowledge and local information.”
At one point, Whiting said she had to call in a favour from a police officer and firefighter husband Leigh Whiting to help rescue a pig stuck in a cage.
“It wasn’t just the human factor, we have the animals that are equally affected.
“There was us, police and the animal rescue team all after this pig, and she wasn’t little, she was enormous.”
She said she wasn’t worried about her first responder husband that day, as she felt he was in capable hands with his team.
In the aftermath, and during the clean-up, Whiting said the Waipawa community pulled together to help each other out.
“Having a severe weather event like that was shocking, but everyone rallied in their own ways.”
“We found out after the fact and it really hit us hard.”
Promoted in November to deputy chief fire officer, Whiting said she felt they were better prepared to respond to an intense weather event and emergency. She said the crew were on the hunt for more volunteers.
Michaela Gower joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke’s Bay news and loves sharing stories about farming and rural communities.
