One year since Cyclone Gabrielle hit Muriwai: How to make sense of 2023? - Abe Dew

OPINION

It’s often only possible to make sense of bewildering experiences once we can look back on them. Distance allows a narrative to emerge. We weave our lives around random acts of god, or the ad-hoc responses of institutions that struggle to assist in overwhelming situations. So, how can we make sense of a year like 2023? For many of us in Muriwai, other west coast communities and right across wider Auckland, it felt like a bad dream we still can’t believe was real. The longest year, it dragged on — and flew past in a blur.

A year ago, our family prepared for Cyclone Gabrielle. We had food that didn’t need a fridge, water that didn’t require a pump and a generator in case blackouts lasted longer than the seven days of April 2018. Twelve months later, the power is still out in our home. We were spared the destruction that saw other homes spewed across the road in a chunky slurry of sand, rock, effluent and tree trunks. Our house was still there, but a red placard sellotaped to the letterbox prohibited re-entry except for supervised grab-and-run visits.

These first few months were fuelled by adrenaline as we fought for some kind of normal. With no prospect of a contents insurance pay-out, our home unattended and full of our belongings, we began a daily husband-and-wife auto-looting ritual. We liberated our own home of everything we could carry out in broad daylight and store in long-suffering friends’ sheds. It was a way we could take control over what was happening to us. Some never got that chance, their homes impassible or unsafe as winter rain saturated family heirlooms and mementoes of their lives and loved ones. Others across Auckland have had to watch on security cameras as their homes have been repeatedly burgled while they call the Police. We were lucky.

Although adrenaline is fine for a sprint, working through the long-term implications is where grit and fortitude are needed. After eight and a half months of being told our property posed an imminent risk to our lives – the situation changed. The red placard changed to yellow and the category we received was not 3, qualifying for a buy-out, but 2P. That means a property-level remediation might make it safe again. “Tolerable risk to life” is calculated at 1/10,000. Pretty good odds if you’re playing lotto – not so hot if you’re trying to get the kids to sleep when it rains. The 2P works for floods: you can raise a house on stilts, but not for landslides.

Aerial photographs from last year show the extent of damage caused by a landslip at Muriwai. Photo / George Heard

The suggested remediation for our property was a wire mesh fence like the ones used to catch rocks on motorways. It could protect us from boulders. But not from the entire hillside and coastal rainforest washing right off. Exactly what happened next door. The beginning of a new slip already lay above our home. This precursor of the next major event was twice the load capacity of the “single use” mesh fence we were being recommended.

As a layperson, challenging the 2P category was a real-life exam nightmare. If the subject I was trying to understand felt like Greek to me, it’s partly because key mathematical risk calculations in the council’s geotechnical report are notated in the ancient Greek alphabet. A jarring exception is the shorthand for “loss of life” – abbreviated to the unfortunate “lol”.

The stakes of not passing this exam were incredibly high. If all that stood between us and another massive slip was a flexible mesh fence, our home would be unliveable, possibly uninsurable and unsaleable. Accepting a 2P category meant we’d have to project-manage building a fence that no-one who’d visited the site had any confidence in. If we got construction cost estimates wrong, we’d need to cover the excess ourselves. These stresses were shared by other 2P households in Muriwai and may still await many more across Auckland who are yet to receive their first interim property categories.

Over the past year, we’ve heard other affected communities asking, with understandable frustration, ‘How come everyone’s always talking about Muriwai?’ The answer is mainly because Muriwai was talking about Muriwai. The community organised to get ourselves heard. A core team supported by skilled external volunteers arranged free media training for anyone brave enough to see themselves on TV, take journalists’ calls or donate time to moderate #RestoreMuriwai online content. As the Auckland suburb hardest hit by Cyclone Gabrielle, we’ve networked with other groups and shared contacts, skills and training across the city.

The impact of Cyclone Gabrielle was first felt at Muriwai late on the evening of February 13 last year. Photo / George Heard

While immediate civil defence responses from the council and Red Cross were amazing, the wider community also responded in kind. Locals tapped friends, colleagues and networks for clothes and food to distribute. Others spent months working to place dislocated families into safe and warm accommodation or oversee payments from the trust to those in need.

Because our need was concentrated, Muriwai became a focus for Auckland Council’s efforts. So soon after the Anniversary Day floods, few in council could have anticipated the scale, complexity and cost of the additional Cyclone Gabrielle response. “Building the plane as we’re flying it” has been a common refrain. For Auckland Council’s response, Muriwai became the Area 51 from which skills and tools will be reverse-engineered for application in other neighbourhoods. Council’s leadership, local team and ex-members have been tireless in trying to develop and deliver a fair and equitable response. They haven’t always got it right first time, but they’ve been listening and learning.

Yet, bureaucracy and processes often fall short of real-world expectations. After making our case, the majority of 2P households in Muriwai were offered Category 3 buy-outs. However, across Auckland, hundreds of households still wait to hear the category their properties will be given. There are lessons to be learned and warnings to be heeded from our experiences of Cyclone Gabrielle. Many residents across Auckland are unaware and unprepared for what climate change will bring. They may have up-to-date insurance, and still not be covered by insurers or EQC if the unexpected happens. The immediate experience is always local, but the long-term response has to be national to avoid future nightmares like those of 2023.

Abe Dew has lived in Auckland’s Muriwai for 24 years.