Muriwai locals are used to power cuts, storms, and south-westerlies whipping off the sea.
The wildness of the beach is why they are here: The black sand, pounding surf, steep cliffs, and long grass.
It is a place for artists, entrepreneurs, and fifth-generation families who live on bushy hillsides and valleys squeezed between the Waitakere Ranges and the ocean.
Muriwai residents surf, fish, bike, and drive their utes along a beach which stretches unbroken for 50km. Their kids learn to swim in the white-wash and become rookie lifeguards in their early teens.
“We are there because it’s extreme,” one resident told the Herald.
But even for those who choose the wild, Cyclone Gabrielle tested their capacity.
Over 12 bewildering hours, unrelenting rainfall soaked Muriwai’s hills until they gave way, claiming the lives of two locals and leaving dozens of families homeless.
The Herald spoke to residents to piece together those hours and the week which followed.
Monday, February 13, 4pm
For most of summer, easterlies had swept over the top of the beachside village, which is protected by the green wall of the Waitakeres.
About 4pm last Monday, Cyclone Gabrielle’s tail swung around and hit the village front-on, and the rain strafed horizontally across homes.
Homeowners had cleared their gutters ahead of the storm. They packed grab bags but did not expect to use them. Some had moved their beds away from the hillside of the house or shifted their mattress near a door for a quick escape.
They went to sleep feeling that Cyclone Gabrielle could pass them by. That feeling changed about 10pm.
The rain intensified. If the region was a glass of water, one resident said, it had been filled to the brim by torrential rain in late January. When the rain returned last Monday, the water began spilling over the top.
Seth Thompson, who lives in Domain Cres, was just getting into bed when he got a call from brother-in-law Eddie Wood.
Wood lived on Motutara Rd, which sits below a large cliff face, and was worried about the “phenomenal” amount of water gushing down the hill.
When he stepped outside his home to inspect his gutters, he heard cracking and rumbling sounds. He called his wife on the other side of the house to grab their two kids out of bed and they fled across the road.
In a panic, Wood scrambled over a fence and dropped down a two-metre retaining wall, hitting his head badly.
After calling Thompson, they walked up the road to a friend’s place. On the way, they saw two volunteer firefighters, Dave van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens.
Wood and his wife Hannah Thompson told the firefighters there was a slip at their house and that their neighbour, who lived alone, might need some help.
It was a brief conversation but one that would stick with them.
The two firefighters went straight to their neighbour’s house, which had slipped down the hill, and extracted the woman.
“Crushed in my house. I’m alive. Everything gone,” she later posted online.
In shock, she crossed the road to a neighbour’s carport while the firefighters went to the back of her property to try diverting water away.
A few doors down, Abe Dew was watching post-apocalyptic television show The Last of Us with his wife.
It was about 10.45pm.
“There was a noise like a Hercules flying six feet above the house,” he said. “I’ve heard slips before and they usually crackle with timber and rocks. But this thing just went ‘zzzzzzssshhhhhhh’.”
The hillside had slipped onto Motutara Rd, carrying two houses with it, and burying the two firefighters.
Wood and his family are still too traumatised to speak about it, and Seth Thompson told their story on their behalf.
When Thompson arrived at the scene, other firefighters had come to dig out their colleagues. He was asked to tell Motutara residents to evacuate. The power had gone out on the street and it was dark and wild.
Thompson puffed on his vape so that the glow on the device would light his way.
Later, as he drove families down to the Muriwai Surf Club in his Land Cruiser, the floodwaters rose up to his bonnet.
Authorities had directed evacuees to the Sand Dunz cafe and the surf club but when the first people arrived at the beach carpark they found the electric gate would not open because the power was out.
A few residents smashed the lock open.
The surf club had also lost power. At 11pm, there were 25 to 30 people at the club. That would soon change.
Tuesday, February 14, 1.30am
By now, it was clear that Auckland’s West Coast was bearing the brunt of Cyclone Gabrielle. While the eye of the storm was hovering off Great Barrier on the other side of the isthmus, the heaviest rainfall was concentrated over Muriwai and Piha.
At 1.33am, phones connected to the Muriwai cell tower pinged with an Auckland Emergency Management alert.
“Evacuate now” was the message for residents on Motutara Road and Domain Crescent. They were told to head down to the cafe and take only essential items - pets included.
At the surf club, families were directed to the top floor and people with pets stayed on the ground floor. Some residents were in shock, having lost their homes to slips.
Emergency alerts were sounding on mobile phones and nervous pets were barking and howling. Water was lapping all around the building, making it look like an island. But it was safe, and the ground was not moving.
“It was like Noah’s Ark,” one evacuee said.
In the dark of the night, the residents kicked into gear. Supplies were handed out and spare couches and fold-out beds were found for homeless residents.
Abe Dew said that among the loss of life and homes, the beachside community had pulled together.
“We as parents start taking our kids down to jump in this West Coast surf at the age of five or six at the Muriwai Surf Club.” Dew said.
“And by the time they turn 13, they will be rookie lifeguards. And once they are 14 they pay for the privilege of … volunteering their weekends to save people at the beach.
“So you know, that’s the community. When you’ve raised a 14-year-old who will jump into 10-foot breaking surf, swim out the back and round and come out again, for fun, or for an emergency, you know - people in this community step up.”
At 2am, the Defence Force arrived with two Unimogs. As the water continued to rise around the surf club, soldiers began evacuating people to Waimauku War Memorial Hall.
By 4am, around two months’ worth of rain had fallen in 12 hours.
Back up on Motutara Road, volunteer firefighters had found one of their mates, Craig Stevens, in the landslide and sent him to hospital in a critical condition.
At 6.30am, they suspended the search for the other firefighter, Dave van Zwanenberg.
6am
Nikita Tremain was woken about 6am by her parents calling her mobile phone. She had gone to sleep the previous night in the upstairs room of her parents’ house on Domain Crescent but moved downstairs during the night because it felt safer.
Her mobile phone was on vibrate-only and she had slept through the emergency alert. Her parents were urging her to get out of the house immediately and head for the surf club.
Tremain fled the house with a small bag of supplies and her phone on 7 per cent battery, and headed downhill.
Trees had fallen across the street and she was walking through a river of rain, sand and mud.
Domain Crescent is an S-shaped, dead-end street in the middle of Muriwai, with steep hills on one side.
About 200 metres down the street, Tremain found her way blocked by a mountain of earth which had slipped down the hillside. She backtracked and, with luck, found a walkway, which took her past the slip and to the bottom of the road.
When she hit the flat land near the surf club, the water was knee-deep. It was still raining and dark.
“So I was by myself in the dark, cold, and on a mission, basically, in survival mode. I just had to get to one place.”
A Unimog drove past and she waved her torch. She breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled over, and she climbed up into the back of the vehicle. At the time, she thought she might be back home within a day or two.
As Cyclone Gabrielle headed down the country, Muriwai homeowners began to survey the damage. The power was still out. The water treatment plant which supplied about 200 homes was offline.
About 20 building inspectors and geotechnical engineers arrived in Muriwai in the morning to begin rapid building assessments, but out of concern about further slips, the process was halted. Police cordoned off the village. It was now an exclusion zone.
Wednesday-Thursday, February 15-16
With the storm gone and sun starting to emerge, the focus turned to recovery in Muriwai.
On days like these a steady stream of families and surfers would usually show up. But cordons were keeping all non-residents out.
“The silence was eerie,” said chef Mike Van de Elzen, who has a house in Muriwai and was supplying food to volunteers at the fire station.
“Even the cicadas had gone. There was nothing to hear.”
With the power off and the water plant out of action, Muriwai’s water reservoir ran out. About 20,000 litres of water was brought in by tankers.
On Wednesday afternoon, a body was recovered from the slip on Motutara Road. It was later confirmed to be van Zwanenberg, a father of two. His widow Amy described as him “the cornerstone of our lives”.
The following night, Auckland Emergency Management held a public meeting at Muriwai Golf Club.
Van de Elzen and his wife Bea catered for it, and he was told to expect about 200 people. At least 400 turned up. Van de Elzen thinks it was more like 1000. The local supermarket, Fresh Choice in Waimaiku told him “Come in and take what you need”.
At the meeting, people were tired and a bit lost.
“A lot of people were walking around not knowing what to do,” Van de Elzen said.
Many at the meeting found the information useful and it gave some hope that they would get back into their homes soon. But there was tension too. Some worried about looting in the closed streets. Others were annoyed at visitors trying to access the beach. Tourist buses had turned up at the police cordons.
“There’s rubberneckers coming out here, and we categorically asked them not to,” said a resident, Mike Glamuzina.
“And then I see, you know, wagons coming out with surfboards on top and that kind of pisses me off.”
The community still felt they were grieving their lost firefighter. Surfing and tourism at this time seemed a bit ghoulish.
“We still haven’t had the funeral yet,” Glamuzina said.
Friday, February 17
Early on Friday afternoon, the fire service confirmed that volunteer firefighter Craig Stevens had died.
He had been pulled from the landslide on Motutara Rd on Tuesday but never recovered from his injuries.
“This tragic incident has been a heavy blow for the two families, their friends, colleagues in the Muriwai Volunteer Fire Brigade, and the Muriwai community,” said FENZ chief executive Kerry Gregory.
“And it touches all of us, not just in the FENZ whanau, but emergency services internationally and all New Zealanders.”
Half an hour later, geotechnical engineers were inspecting land on of one Muriwai’s worst-hit streets, Domain Crescent.
It is understood they were at a property where a slip had separated the house and the front deck by about a metre. When they walked back around the house, the gap had closed. The earth was shuffling under them.
“Immediately evacuate,” residents were told in a text alert. “Leave on foot, do not drive.”
Homeowners on Domain Crescent had just that morning been told they could return for the first time since the cyclone to collect any precious items. They were given 20 minutes to get in and out, but that plan was abandoned when it was discovered the land was slipping under them.
People had filled their cars with belongings but had to abandon their vehicles. One person had tied their dog to their house but were told they could not go back to get them.
“There were just told to walk away,” Dew said.
After Stevens’ death and another round of evacuations, locals were in a state of shock.
“Despair. Frustration. Sorrow,” was how one resident summed it up.
Saturday-Sunday, February 18-19
As Aucklanders basked in sunshine and reclaimed their summer by going back to the newly reopened beaches, much of Muriwai was still in limbo.
Seth Thompson, now living in a campervan, ventured into the city. People appeared to have moved on from the cyclone, he said.
“I went to Ponsonby Road and people are sitting there having a beer. Normally that looks like fun, you know? You’re in a whole different world in your head. You’re so far removed from it, it seems like an odd thing to do.”
Tuesday, February 20
A week on from the cyclone, water had been restored across the West Coast beaches, but Muriwai was still cut off. Homeowners on the main supply line were told they were unlikely to get water back for another week.
Dave van Swanenberg was lying in state at the fire brigade ahead of his funeral on Wednesday.
Some mourners had been unable to get back into their house and had no clothes to wear to the funeral.
After an appeal online, fashion designers Juliette Hogan, Ingrid Starnes, Crane Brothers, Zambesi, Kate Sylvester and others offered up items for them.
By Tuesday, the scale of Cyclone Gabrielle’s damage was confirmed. In all, 130 homes had been red-stickered in Muriwai, meaning they were not safe to be lived in.
That is nearly a third of all the homes in the village. The enormous toll raises fears that the area may have been changed irreversibly.
Some of the people from those homes are sleeping on couches or in basements nearby. They don’t know whether they’ll still be able to live in Muriwai. A handful have already decided to leave for good.
“These communities have taken a beating like never before,” Dew said.
“And it’s going to take one hell of an effort for them to survive. And that’s what we’re doing now.”
