Roar of river a wake-up call for Turangi family

By ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE

Te Ngaehe Wanikau and his wife, Hinemoa, turned out the lights on "just another rainy night" on Saturday.

But shortly after 2am yesterday, rescuers were banging on the Turangi couple's door, telling them they might have only minutes to get out before the mighty Tongariro River burst its banks.

The dazed couple opened their sliding door to the glare of reflective clothing on men urging them to hurry.

"We are not even that near the river, but all we could hear in the blackness was this roar [of the Tongariro] about 1km away," said Mr Wanikau.

"My wife said she had never been so scared in her life."

He rushed to a second house on the couple's Hirangi Rd farm north of the town to wake their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, aged 1 and 2.

"At times like this you don't care about possessions, you just want your loved ones out safely," said Mr Wanikau, who has been in the same house for 20 years and never before been threatened with a flood.

"Luckily we have got a four-wheel-drive [vehicle]. We were virtually floating outside our property. Our 3km road had turned into a flowing river.

"It was really horrific because we were just talking on Saturday about how horrible it has been in Feilding."

Later in the day, the family was nervous about returning home, unsure what they would find.

Like others, they found refuge at the Hirangi Marae, where volunteers were providing soup and toast, bedding and showers for shocked and distraught evacuees.

Ngatiturangitukua Marae committee chairman Arthur Tetakinga Smallman knew how they felt. In 1958 his family was washed out of their rural property in the last major flood - it carried several houses down the Tongariro River.

"This is also a bad one," said Mr Smallman, who is a Taupo district councillor. "It is not a good situation to be in."

Lake Taupo had been very high for the past two weeks and the Tongariro had "backloaded" until it could take no more.

He said he was "very thankful" for the community effort after he learned of the disaster at 2.15am and started a ring-around.

Like a "working chain," people from the marae and the wider community banded together to feed everyone throughout the day, including police, search and rescue, road workers and the dozens of volunteers sandbagging at danger spots.