Cyclone Gabrielle: Owners of badly damaged homes can expect them to be written-off - Tower Insurance

By Amy Williams, RNZ

A big insurance company says owners of cyclone-hit homes that were flooded in metres of water and contaminated silt can expect a write-off.

Tower has 170,000 home policies on its books, and its chief executive Blair Turnbull said assessing yellow- and red-stickered homes was a priority.

“The unfortunate part of it is if floodwaters and silt are over one to two metres, it’s very hard to see how you can rebuild that home.

“It will more than likely have to be demolished because the ground is contaminated, the home is contaminated.”

Meanwhile, two Hawke’s Bay residents who are certain their homes are write-offs said they were shocked their insurers were scoping costs to rebuild.

Flood damage inside a home in Eskdale. Photo / Paul Taylor

Turnbull said there were areas where houses should not continue to be built in New Zealand and Tower was sharing that information with local and central government.

“The key thing here is you can mitigate these risks but you also must recognise these risks and there are places where we just shouldn’t build.

“Those are the discussions that are most important. The data enables us to look through and see those areas.”

Decisions around managed retreat and future building needed to be made at government level for those in very high risk areas, he said.

Tower would not withdraw from flood-stricken areas but some homes would become much more costly to insure, Turnbull said.

“We won’t embargo an area but what we are highlighting is if we continue to face into these increasing weather events, in frequency and severity, there will be areas that it’s inevitable they will struggle to get insurance.

“Clearly that’s not an outcome that we want.”

Finance Minister Grant Robertson said on Sunday decisions needed to be made quickly on whether some places should be rebuilt the way they were - before money and resources were wasted in areas that would need to be abandoned.