Food parcels for isolated settlement

Scenes from the Te Awanga motorcamp. Photo / Hawke's Bay Today

Residents isolated in the central Hawke's Bay settlement of Aramoana are to receive food parcels today after slips closed roads following heavy rain and flooding in the area.

Civil Defence yesterday declared a state of emergency for the region after extreme weather forced the evacuation of more than 100 people from 14 coastal communities.

From 10pm on Sunday, when the heavy rainfall began, to 10am Wednesday morning, 221mm of rainfall was recorded in Napier, over a quarter of the area's annual rianfall.

Evacuations

A further 10 people have been evacuated from coastal areas - eight people have been rescued from Mangakuri, and two teenage boys from Aramoana Beach.

Central Hawke's Bay District Council Emergency Officer Bruce Kitto said everyone who wanted to be evacuated has now been brought out.

He said now that there is limited access to some of the beaches, several permanent residents have decided to stay.

Aramoana Beach remains completely landlocked and it may be two to three weeks before road access can be achieved, he said.

Four people were evacuated from Aramoana yesterday, 35 from Kairakau and 15 from Mangakuri.

People from the coastal community of Pourerere were evacuated yesterday, but some residents chose to stay.

A welfare centre was set up at the Memorial Hall in Waipukurau.

Ms Cook said "a very large slip" has damaged a historic building, Aramoana Woolshed, lifting it from its foundation.

"We suspect the building itself is basically in a critical condition and unlikely to be saveable."

Beaches damaged

A number of baches and homes have also been damaged along the Pourerere Beach, and in Kairakau and Blackhead, she said.

Central Hawke's Bay District Council spokesman Drew Broadley yesterday said a massive cleanup job lay ahead after an assessment of coastal areas confirmed extensive damage due to torrents of water, mud and silt.

Road damage would take weeks to repair to a safe standard but basic access could be restored to coastal settlements within about three days.

Meanwhile, major slips on State Highway 2, between Napier and Wairoa, forced the closure of the road.

Crews were working to clear the slips but the road was unlikely to reopen until this evening at the earliest, New Zealand Transport Agency acting state highways manager Gordon Hart said.

SH50 at Breakwater Road, near the Port of Napier, was also closed due to a large slip.

Top of North Island isolated

Northland is next in line for the wild weather which has hit Hawke's Bay.

Heavy rain has already caused flooding in the region and MetService warns more bad weather is on the way.

A small two-lane bridge on State Highway 1, 2km north of Te Kao, has been damaged by flooding overnight, and is impassable.

Police said the alternate routes of Ninety Mile Beach and the No2 Arterial Road are also unable to be used at this stage, leaving no other routes to the very top of the North Island.

Last night, isolated flash downpours in the Northland town of Mangonui flooded the town's waterfront, with volunteer firefighters called to five separate incidents in the space of an hour. An elderly disabled woman needed to be carried to higher ground when her pensioner flat was flooded, fire communications shift commander Jaron Philips said.

She was evacuated but last night emergency services were sand-bagging the hotel she was staying in.

Mr Sanders said strong easterly winds and heavy rain should hit the Northland region from Sunday.

"We are looking at a new system coming down from New Caledonia way. It is quite a deep low - a bit of a rerun [of the this week's system]," he said.

"The good thing about it is it is further west than the previous one.

"It is quite a major event but the fact it is further west mitigates the danger of that system."