Diggers lost in bid to open Wairoa River bar

A long-standing Wairoa contracting team has lost two diggers and a bulldozer parked overnight after being used to try to open the Wairoa River bar before the storm which flooded lower reaches of the town on Wednesday.

The machinery belonged to Pryde Contracting, which was established in 1980, and the loss of the machinery was discovered early on Tuesday morning as workers returned to the high point on land next to the river bar they had been trying to open, a company spokesman said.

The company was taking the pragmatic approach, Sam Pryde saying it was “tough, but only machinery” in comparison with the loss of the lives of three East Coast fishermen at sea, confirmed when their bodies were found overnight on the Mahia Peninsula coastline.

A Hawke’s Bay Regional Council spokesperson said arrangements had been in place to work on opening the river mouth to give the swollen river a passage to the sea, and to return on Wednesday.

The Wairoa River rose to near Cyclone Bola levels. Photo / Wairoa Incorporated WInc

But the ocean beat them to it, causing flooding which one resident of Kopu Rd, beside the river, said he’d never seen before in more than 30 years living there.

“Not in Cyclone Bola [1988], not in Cyclone Gabrielle,” said local racing club president Paul Toothill, who added: “The water came right up to my doorstep, it was lapping over the concrete, I’m very lucky it didn’t come any further.”

Toothill evacuated his family and had a ladder over the back fence in case he also needed to leave, but about three hours after the 8.45am high tide, and blaming the regional council for not having the river bar open, he said: “I’ve been here more than 30 years, it’s never, never been anywhere near this before.”

It had, however, receded quickly with the lowering of the tide, “so quickly you’d hardly know now”.

Debris across the roads of Wairoa. Photo / Wairoa Incorporated WInc

It was a smaller repeat of the Gabrielle flood’s hit on Napier, when power supply was cut by the inundation of a power sub-station.

Talking to Newstalk ZB host Kerre Woodham, Wairoa Mayor Craig Little said that with the impact of the high tide it was a “different” sort of flooding from Cyclone Gabrielle, in which the inundation of the North Clyde area came from the river as it was unable to cope with torrential rain.