Cyclone Gabrielle: Wairoa’s spirit praised by workers despite colossal devastation

When Lisa Glass helicoptered into the east coast town of Wairoa on Friday morning, she was considerably on edge.

Cyclone Gabrielle had ravaged the town with floodwaters and high-speed winds, destroying its infrastructure and leaving locals without basic essentials to survive.

Worried about a “Lord of the Flies” scenario, emergency manager Glass was tense as she continued her deployment, this time to the township with its mayor, Craig Little on board.

“If you don’t hear anything from somewhere, it’s because they’re either getting on with it or it’s really bad,” she said.

“So it was ‘okay, which is it going to be?’ We felt trepidacious, will it be lawlessness? [Little] thought they’d be alright but the town had no food, no water, no power, no roading - I was tense.”

Cyclone Gabrielle had ravaged the town with floodwaters and high-speed winds. Photo / RNZ, Kate Green

Their helicopter landed on a school field in the district of 8000 residents, the sun beating down as a sunny weekend approached.

A local on a quad bike, carrying two kids rode up to greet them.

“I asked him ‘are you alright?’, he was like ‘yeah’, so I said ‘okay’. So that was a relief,” said Glass on the anti-climactic arrival.

As it turned out, the completely wrecked district consisted of laid-back residents, rolling with the punches and more than happy to cooperate with conditions.

Glass, along with the Mayor and Fire and Emergency personel made their way to the nearby remote community of Ruakituri the following day to hold a public meeting.

Fifty or so residents turned up.

“This woman came up to me and offered a drink, I said ‘I’m good’ - because my bottle of water is my lifeline and you don’t want to take their water,” said Glass.

“But no, she meant a cold beer - she’d stocked up a fridge of them and a collection of food and was acting like this was a normal situation. It was crazy.”

As it turned out, the completely wrecked district consisted of laid-back residents, rolling with the punches. Photo / RNZ, Jonty Dine

The Wairoa district became one of the country’s most isolated townships following the cyclone’s movement last week.

A river running through the district burst its seams and took out a large handful of homes, the wind mixing water with dirt and creating a thick sludgy mud that barrelled down public streets.

All roading in and out of the district was destroyed, cutting off the country from reaching the township for days.

Quoting NASA astronaut Frank Borman, Glass pointed out “the risk with disasters is a failure of imagination”, as she struggled to comprehend how badly the town had been hit.

Walking through open streets, she spots silt markings rising to the top of six-foot-high fencing, indicating the height of the floodwaters during the peak of the disaster.

“You don’t imagine things being that bad,” said Glass.

“You think of floodwaters being a metre up, not being over your head on an open street. We didn’t have any fatalities here, but it could have easily been that way.”

Roughly a hundred homes in Wairoa were badly affected by the cyclone.

Emergency manager Lisa Glass next to silt markings rising to the top of six-foot-high fencing, indicating the height of the floodwaters. Photo / Supplied

Many of those impacted didn’t head to emergency services but were absorbed by nearby whānau, which makes displacement figures hard to track.

A portion of homes in Wairoa aren’t fancy to begin with, Glass observes, many residents having their properties handed down to them from generations past.

Some houses have plywood floors, which will swell and bulge when drenched in water and wreck the property. Many don’t have home or contents insurance, so most of the affected are homeless and have nothing to show for it.

Those displaced have taken refuge in a nearby community centre, turned into marae-style accommodation where shoes are removed at the door and hot food is cooked all day.

The NZ Military is on the ground, with a forty-strong squadron supporting food distribution and helping police the region.

Glass said that Waka Kotahi NZTA “moved mountains” to get the road north to Gisborne back open, which has become a lifeline for convoys to enter the district with much-needed supplies.

Water is back in supply, but a district-wide boil notice was put in place for people on the town’s supply, although many rural locals are self-sufficient with their own tank supply.

All roading in and out of the district was destroyed, cutting off the country from reaching the township for days. Photo / NZDF

The notice was lifted on Monday.

Yet in the face of horrendous loss and a daunting lack of resources, the residents were only happy to unite in the name of cyclone response.

“Honestly, they were a delight,” said Glass.

“The mayor kept telling them all this bad news and there they are, asking intelligent questions. I hate the word humbling, but it really was - like ‘holey-moley you guys could teach us a thing or two.”

Residents asked if they were able to reach the town, if there was any fuel available or if the internet connection was soon to be restored. The answers weren’t positive, but the locals were.

“We told them to hold off entering town for a couple more days, they said ‘nope that’s fine’. No whining, they just got on with it.”

Glass explained the two stages of Civil Defense response. The first is immediate action, rescuing people from floodwaters and houses crushed by slips.

“But then you have to look after them so they don’t die from not having enough food or water,” she said.

The clean-up in Wairoa following Cyclone Gabrielle continues. Photo / RNZ, Jonty Dine

In both stages, the response is carried out by Civil Defence members who tackle the most complicated of problems but without any qualification or perhaps prior experience.

“Most of the people looking after this response here are capable but normal council staff whose job might be to handle building consents or rates,” said Glass.

“One woman working logistics here, her day job is a baker, but they’re all flung into this situation where the community desperately needs their help and they just need to sort it.

“It’s remarkable that people always rise to the challenge, they step into a superhero cloak and make things happen.”

Eleven people have been confirmed dead across the country as a disastrous consequence of Cyclone Gabrielle’s movements.

At least 3200 remain unaccounted for - registered as being uncontactable - although this number is expected to drop.

“This is going to be big,” New Zealand Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins said of the disaster as he spoke at a National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) briefing on Sunday.