Mother Nature's calling card

'Mother Nature's had a bad week', Lesley Hema says as she checks her holiday home. Picture / Alan Gibson

The floodwaters which tore through Lesley Hema's holiday home in Matata left a metre-high tidemark.

The Taupo woman put her head in her hands and cried as she looked at the teetering remains of her two-year-old property.

"I think Mother Nature's had a bad week," she said.

Behind the house, a chest-high mass of rocks, logs and silt stretched back to the main road several hundred metres inland.

Only the tops of the bulldozers working to clear the mess on the road were visible.

In front of the houses closest to the beach, an area that was once a gully behind the sand dunes was now flat and full of mud and debris.

The top of an old Rover 100 protruded from the mud, which had solidified in most places but remained treacherous in patches, as a TV cameraman trying to get close to a damaged house found out.

He stepped into a patch that was soft and quickly sank into it up to his waist.

Other cars have been swallowed in the mess.

Locals with tractors have helped.

Marty Sutherland, a contract fencer and haymaker, moved piles of mud from a friend's property on to the road for the trucks to collect.

He plans to help others today.

"I'll be here as long as it takes," he said.

On properties closest to the beach, residents returned to assess the damage.

Clear blue skies highlighted the extent of the devastation, which until yesterday had remained partially obscured by low cloud and rain.

An army of trucks, tractors, diggers and bulldozers moved in to clear mountains of debris off roads and properties.

Rows of yellow Works Infrastructure trucks filed back and forth along one of the worst-hit areas on State Highway 1.

Each truck carried an eight-tonne load of mud, boulders, logs and personal items swept up in the tide of Wednesday night's devastating landslides.

Rotorua Works Infrastructure driver Bob Howden had made more than 20 trips along the main road to a nearby dump site by 4pm.

"I'm exhausted," he said.

Yesterday was his fourth day helping with the clean-up.

He had risen at 4.30am in time for a 6.30am start in Matata and worked until 5.30pm each day.

Huge boulders hurled across the landscape also presented a challenge for heavy lifting equipment.

The largest ones stood 2m tall and weighed an estimated eight tonnes.

A Kawerau man driving a front-end loader said even the smaller boulders - weighing about two tonnes - were hard to move.

"It's a lot of weight," he said.

In Tauranga, a dozen residents moved back into their flood-damaged homes, from which they were evacuated on Wednesday night.

About a quarter of the necessary sanitary assessments of homes have been completed, council communications manager Elizabeth Hughes said.

She said about 75 per cent of the homes that had been inspected would need to be decontaminated.

"This means they will have flood damage that is insanitary and may involve sewage damage."

Ms Hughes said if the public wanted to help people affected by flood and slips, money rather than donated goods was needed at the moment.

"Experience from past events like this is that the most important thing concerned people can do is donate money to the Mayoral Relief Fund.

"It is money that people need right now."

Donations can be made to the Bay of Plenty Mayoral Relief Fund at any branch of the National Bank or Bank of New Zealand.

Ms Hughes said this fund was for Matata relief as well as Tauranga. 
 
- additional reporting: NZPA

Contact numbers

Helpline 0800 779-997 (for housing, Work and Income, Inland Revenue, insurance and general support).
(07) 571-8008 (Tauranga call centre).
(07) 577-7000 (Tauranga call centre).
(07) 306-0500 (Whakatane District Council, for eastern Bay of Plenty residents).
Federated Farmers Floodline 0800 327-646.
Environment Bay of Plenty 0800 368-267.

Relief funds

* A joint mayoral relief fund has been set up for the Whakatane, Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty districts. Donations can be made at National and BNZ branches. More than $250,000 has already been raised.