Key Napier arterial Carlyle St at the height of the November 9 deluge. Photo / File
Key Napier arterial Carlyle St at the height of the November 9 deluge. Photo / File
Premier Hawke's Bay holiday accommodation destination Kennedy Park Complex still has 36 cabins occupied by people who have been unable to return to homes damaged in the Napier floods four-and-a-half months ago.
The Temporary Accommodation Service (TAS), operated by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, has also placed eightportable cabins onto the land of four households, giving people liveable accommodation on their own properties.
Many are expected to still be housed in the complex off Storkey St over Easter (April 2-5), traditionally one of the busiest times for the park, which was established as the Kennedy Park camping ground in the late 1930s.
Households are continuing to transition out of the holiday park as repairs to properties are completed or while other accommodation arrangements are made.
Some are still awaiting building work to begin on their homes over the next few months or are still working through insurance/EQC issues with the relevant agencies.
Still also unable to return home is the Maraenui Rugby and Sports Association, where renovation and repairs costing insurers well over $400,000 have had to be carried out as a result of damage to flooring, internal walls and roofing, This came as a result of flooding which started when about 250mm of rain fell in Napier in just a few hours on November 9.
The association hopes its clubrooms at the Dinwiddie and Waterworth avenues corner of Maraenui Park will be back in use by the end of next month. Last weekend the pre-season game's aftermatch function was held at the Meeanee Hotel, and the team expects to play its first three Hawke's Bay Division 2 matches as away games, pending the reopening.
Maraenui rugby and softball stalwart Kevin Wildermoth points out parts of the clubrooms hit hardest by the November 9 storm. Photo / Doug Laing
The association has also had to downgrade its 40th year celebrations because of uncertainty posed by both the damage to the clubrooms and Covid-19.
Meanwhile, Napier City Council has rejected claims that stormwater gates failed during the November rainstorm.
Claims of system failures were made to Hawke's Bay Today in several calls and emails and in multiple social media posts following the flooding.
Insurance sources estimated the cost from losses and damage to homes, properties and vehicles to be more than $70 million.
The council received an interim "flood event report" at a meeting a month later, at which time 115 homes damaged in the flood remained uninhabitable. Well over 300 others had been significantly damaged, and more than 1,000 vehicles were insurance write-offs.
Responding to Hawke's Bay Today questions lodged under the Official Information Act, the council said all manual gates were operational and in use during the flood.
The council said its critical stormwater gates are manually operated vertical-lift gates, and "not the swing flap-gate type gate which operates passively."
Specifically, a manually-operated gate between the Cross-Country Drain and the Te Awa Detention Pond was opened near the height of the deluge at about 5.30pm, to allow flow into the drain and additional pump capacity that could not be provided by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council Kenny Rd stormwater pump station.
It was normal operating procedure in times of heavy rainfall, but the council also has two gates on the Thames and Tyne waterways in the Pandora industrial area, which are operated if there is a spill from the industrial area and normally left open, as was the case during the deluge.
The council said gate openings were based on the level settings for the respective sites and water levels upstream of the gate, and that the measurements allow staff sufficient time to respond in a rainfall event.
Napier's piped water system is designed to "contain" a 1-in-10 years flood event and there are no specific design standards for those rated beyond 1-in-50 years.
Between the two levels, floodwater could enter flood roads and properties, generally without flooding dwellings, but the November 9 rain was rated a 1-in-250 years event – "far beyond the design capacity of the Napier stormwater network," the council said.
The council said improvements are ongoing, and it has a draft "stormwater simulation model" and a masterplan identifying projects to improve capacity.
The work is in progress but is yet to be peer reviewed, and projects have been "captured" in the city's Long Term Plan for 2021-2031.
The council says if all those projects were to be carried out, the network's capability would be improved from 1-in-50 year events but would still not manage an event of the enormity of November 9.
