Home invasion fear a torrent of water

By STAFF REPORTERS

Eleanor Fala phoned the police when she heard glass breaking in a nearby room.

But the intruder was a 3m torrent of water, which had forced open the metal garage door of her Grey Lynn home, smashing car windows and shelves.

"I thought I was going to be raped and pillaged, but it turned out to be this enormous river of water. I was trapped upstairs for hours," said Ms Fala, who was rescued at 4 am yesterday.

She was one of hundreds of residents with flooded homes and garages as a heavy storm lashed Auckland and Northland, and parts of the Bay of Plenty and Waikato, on Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

A flash flood raced through central Auckland, drenching 10 houses near Grey Lynn Park and bending a 5.5cm-thick iron fence.

Residents Barry and Gail Daniels were almost in tears after their BMW, Porsche and MG replica, worth more than $100,000, were written off yesterday because of water damage.

Freemans Bay and Birkenhead were worst hit, with around 105mm and 110mm of rain respectively dumped overnight on Wednesday.

Emergency services closed sections of every Auckland motorway after surface flooding and the Fire Service received more than 300 domestic flooding calls.

North Shore City Council received 3400 calls about flooding problems, after a deluge of 50mm in just one hour between 2 am and 3 am.

The team leader of the council's waste-water operations, Andrew Dixon, said problems with the sewerage system overloading were the worst since July 1998.

So many sewage pumping stations overflowed that the council closed 12 beaches from Stanley Pt in the south to Long Bay in the north.

Flooding was worst in Northland. In Awanui, 7km north of Kaitaia, Syd and Sue Busby yesterday started drying out a home sodden by 25cm of floodwater and sewage on Wednesday morning.

Further north, the Reed family had thought they were in the clear after floods peaked with the 6 pm high tide. Two hours later, Des Reed heard roaring and the river "seemed to spill over the stopbanks."

With his wife Davina and son Damian, he evacuated the Spaines Rd property at 10 pm.

By daylight yesterday, the only way back home was by boat.

Locals recorded 215mm of rain in 24 hours, and the Awanui River peaked at 6.7m, about 5.5m above normal.

In the Bay of Plenty, high seas and 7m swells at the harbour entrance forced shipping to remain in the Port of Tauranga for much of yesterday.