Matata residents allowed home to view devastation

A scene of amazing devastation greeted residents and emergency services as they began the huge clean-up operation in the Bay of Plenty township of Matata. Picture / Alan Gibson

Matata evacuees were yesterday allowed home for the first time since a deluge laced with debris destroyed parts of their town.

Buses that ferried residents out of the area during the peak of the nightmare were used to bring them back in.

Once there, some homeowners could only stop and stare at the sheer devastation they were confronted with.

Seventy-four-year-old Nola Neale was one of the last to be rescued from Matata and was found by civil defence workers tucked up in bed in the second story of her home.

She did not want to leave but was eventually persuaded to.

"A smashed window was the only way we could access her home and when I poked my head through I saw a whole lot of what I thought to be dead people lined up against the wall," one rescuer said. "It turned out Mrs Neale made papier-mache figures."

Mrs Neale walked barefoot and with a smile through boulders, silt and debris alongside her rescuers through a raging river.

"We linked arms like you are supposed to and walked through the river while boulders crashed into our legs and Mrs Neale didn't say a word."

Her once picturesque home at the end of Clem Elliot Drive was left with rocks, silt and uprooted trees piled up past the windowsill.

One Matata man, who did not wish to be named, told his own tale of the evening Matata was evacuated.

"I was desperate to get home to my wife who had been calling most of the day with increasing anxiety," he said.

"All roads in were closed so I got as far as I could and thought I would walk along the train tracks until I got to my home."

He said he was only metres away when a tidal wave of water swept down from the hills. He described how he lay flat and held on to the tracks for dear life.

"The water was gushing underneath and over the top of me and then the boulders started coming down."

His wife shed tears of frustration when she realised she had left her own evacuation too late. "I was waiting for my son and when I walked out to the front porch I saw water rushing round from both sides of the house."

"When I went back inside and to the rear of the house, boulders and tree trunks had crashed through the walls."

The woman had to swim through the water to find dry land. "It was terrifying."

Both were hoping their 100-year-old villa could be restored.

Mark Low, who admits to living in the lowest point of Richmond St, was bucketing silt from his home. He said he was up to bucket number 300 with about 2000 more to go.

"I was home when everything happened and it happened so quickly there was not a lot we could do. I watched the clear water pooling on the side of the road dramatically increase and turn muddy within about two minutes and I knew we were in trouble."

Mr Low said the water came up through the floorboards within minutes and he and his partner scrambled for dry ground at their neighbours' property.

"With all the stuff floating round the place the residents of Matata will be swapping garden tools for about the next two years.

"I guess you have to keep your pecker up otherwise then it will all be over."

Heeney Kearns was out rescuing his two boats yesterday. They were stuck in scrub about 400m from where he had left them. He said he was fortunate to be delivering fish to family in Te Kuiti when the tragedy struck.

"I got a phone call telling me not to bother coming home for a couple of days but I couldn't get back to Matata quick enough and slithered in past the road blocks," he said with a grin.

"Things could have been worse, there could have been lives lost."

Lyall and Ann Marie Magee of Whakamaru were in Matata yesterday checking their holiday home and rental property. Both were in the worst hit area by the beach front.

Their holiday home, built by Lyall, had boulders to the top of the windows on the outside and silt was also at window level on the inside. Their rental home, also built by Lyall, was also a write off.

"I'm actually not too keen to come back and build them again," Mr Magee said.

His sister's properties next door were also destroyed.

Only metres away a house that had travelled about 50m with a family on the roof, had come to rest hard up against another home.

What is probably the worst affected home rests about 300m from the site where it originally stood. Boulders, debris and water have turned it inside out.

With no front at all, a family portrait was visible on an internal wall. According to neighbours the family who own it had been inside when it was carried on a giant wave to its final resting place.

- NZPA