Editorial: Keeping the faith despite the mud

As the year draws to a close, it's fitting we today publish a story of triumph over adversity following the single biggest natural calamity to hit Hawke's Bay in 2011.

The slow but sure reconstruction of George Ashcroft's Waimarama Chalet business after it was buried in mud and silt in the extreme weather event that devastated parts of coastal Hawke's Bay in April is a nod to the resilience of the human spirit.

It has not been easy and you're unlikely to hear Mr Ashcroft describe his current situation as a "triumph". He has, after all, not been able to open any of his damaged chalets for this summer's tourist season, having "missed the boat", as he describes it, due to the sheer magnitude of the clean up job.

Realistically, he does not expect to open any of the damaged units for paying visitors until close to the end of 2012.

Think about that. The mudslide that hit in April was so damaging it effectively buried his business for more than 18 months.

Mr Ashcroft works dawn to dusk on the ongoing clean-up. There is no shortage of jobs to do - mud still stains what used to be a laundry room, there is a large landscaping effort to be put in. But at least his property is no longer under a foot of mud.

The storm that wiped out Mr Ashcroft's business also caused millions of dollars of damage to our coastal communities and farms. It hit on April 26 and 27 and was the worst weather event to strike Hawke's Bay since Cyclone Bola in March 1988.

In fact, some areas were hit harder in April than they were by Bola. Curiously, there were residents in Hastings who did not know what all the fuss was about. They had been spared the storm, which came down the East Coast, headed across the water of Hawke Bay, hitting land again at Te Awanga and Clifton and swamping everything in its path down the coast through Ocean Beach, Waimarama, and Pourerere.

As we reported in our Year in Review series on Monday this week, some areas of coastal Hawke's Bay experienced rainfall of over 600mm in less than 48 hours, even more intense than Bola.

Imagine how much worse the damage would have been for our region if this storm had also taken out the Heretaunga Plains.

Meanwhile, out at Waimarama, Mr Ashcroft continues the repair work, day by day. "I'll just carry on. You don't give up. Well, I don't anyway."