Plimmerton flooding: Resident says cleanup could take months

Porirua City Council said emergency workers were working to restore services and roads. Photo / Supplied

Some Plimmerton residents will be out of homes for months due to flood damage, after the community north of Wellington was hit with a deluge of rain over the past 48 hours.

Although the conditions on Monday night had been better than expected, Plimmerton resident Matt Wood said the damage from flash flooding on Sunday would take months for some families to resolve.

"For some people it's going to be months before they get their houses sorted," he said.

"They're talking Gib boards, carpets, really significant damage for some of the houses."

Fifteen homes had been evacuated on Sunday due to the heavy rainfall.

He said the community had fared better than predicted as a second bout of wild weather hit the Wellington region on Monday evening.

"There was very, very heavy rain and strong southerly winds but only minor isolated flooding recorded around the area," he said.

There had been some surface flooding to the Plimmerton Domain on Ulric St but he was not aware of any significant damage.

Although the area had about 60mm of rain between 8pm and 1am, the volume had been less than Sunday and the drains were clear, protecting homes from further flooding.

"Last night there simply wasn't enough volume to max things out, and it didn't pool," Wood said.

The cleanup was ongoing in Porirua and Plimmerton. Photo / Supplied

"The drains all functioned, they didn't get the same test they got on Sunday."

The rain had also helped to remove some of the silt, but the park was still closed due to contaminated water passing through.

Porirua City Council had re-activated emergency services on Tuesday morning and would also be providing skip bins to assist with the cleanup.

Porirua mayor Anita Baker said their parks crews had taken out twenty loads of silt and mud on Monday, and today they were putting skips throughout Plimmerton to assist with the cleanup.

"People have taken out their carpets and their floorboards, so we're now into the drying stage, and the winds have come so things are starting to dry out," she said.

"In general it's just the tidy up we have to get onto for these people."