Floods 'wake-up call' for homeowners

Flooding over the past few days is likely to cost insurers millions of dollars and the Insurance Council says more money will be paid in claims this winter than ever before.

The council said New Zealanders needed to respond to climate change if they wanted to avoid disasters such as landslips and floods affecting their homes.

New Zealand had experienced one of the most destructive and expensive winters this year, with a clean-up bill already into the tens of millions of dollars and set to climb much higher after recent heavy rains.

Insurance Council chief executive Chris Ryan said the wet winter had lasted so long that soil that previously would not have slipped away from slopes was creating slips in areas that had not experienced them before.

He said this was a wake-up call for New Zealanders to manage the land better.

"We must respond to the risks posed by climate change. That means building houses that are capable of withstanding the challenges of the new environment," he said.

Recent snow storms in the South Island were the worst in New Zealand's history, the council said.

On top of the $50 million expected to be paid out for the South Island snow storms, the council in recent years paid out $22 million for the Coromandel "weather bomb", $112 million for Manawatu floods, $58 million for Queenstown flooding, $10 million for Greymouth tornados and $30 million for floods in Matata and Tauranga.

A GNS Science geologist, Murray McSaveney, said decades-old cut-and-fill subdivisions were vulnerable to landslips and there was little homeowners could do about it.

But despite recent major slips in the Wellington region, he said the chances of a powerful landslide swallowing entire properties were low.

People who chose to live on a slope did so at a risk, he said.

"People like living on slopes but they want a flat section. There is a concern with filled land, but there's absolutely nothing you can do about it [short of] moving."

The latest slip in the Lower Hutt suburb of Kelson, which has already claimed more than 100 sq m of land, continued to threaten four properties yesterday, one of which is sitting perilously on the slip's edge and will be demolished today.

Most of the collapsed land was part of a cut-and-fill subdivision developed in the 1960s.

- Staff reporter, NZPA