Heavy rain warnings lifted for Bay of Plenty, Gisborne

The MetService this morning lifted heavy rain warnings for Bay of Plenty and parts of Gisborne after torrential rain caused flooding and landslides, closing roads, through much of the region overnight.

About 7.30am today Whakatane police said State Highway 2 remained closed near Matata, while SH 30 was closed at Rotoma.
MetService said the frontal band which had brought heavy rain to the Bay of Plenty during the night was over Gisborne about 7.30am.

It was expected to remain slow moving there through to tomorrow but had weakened. Further rain was expected in Gisborne into Sunday morning, particularly in the north, but heavy falls were not expected.

As a result rainfall warnings for the Bay of Plenty and Gisborne north of Tokomaru Bay were lifted.

Heavy rains also caused chaos on roads further south in the North Island overnight with police reporting extensive flooding on SH 1 between Manakau and Levin.

In Lower Hutt, heavy rain caused surface flooding on SH 2.
Flooding also led to phone and internet connection problems for some people in the Whakatane area.

Telecom spokesman John Goulter said problems with voice calls on fixed line phones and the internet started about 2.45am.

Work crews had been able to restore services to some customers by bypassing the affected area but remained constrained by flood waters in some places.

The high waters meant workers could not get to the fibre in some areas to investigate the outage, Mr Goulter said shortly after 11am.

Part of the problem at the time was uncertainty about whether the main fault was on the Telecom network or that of TelstraClear, and the companies were working together to isolate it.

- NZPA