Tiny village shores up its defences

By JO-MARIE BROWN

Residents of a tiny Manawatu village were last night armed with sandbags and camping out in their community hall as their homes were again threatened by flooding.

About 100 people live in Rangiotu, southwest of Palmerston North, which has been surrounded by water since Tuesday.

Those who attempted to reach the settlement yesterday had to negotiate submerged sections of roads to get to the handful of homes and the historic white wooden hall that has housed up to 20 residents over recent nights.

Inside the hall, mattresses and linen from the nearby Te Rangimarie Marae lie scattered over cold wooden floorboards, and anxious locals arrive to distribute home-cooked meals.

"Everybody's tired and everybody's worried," said resident Trieste Te Awe Awe yesterday.

"We've taken everything out of our homes and just had to leave it."

The water receded enough yesterday to let a small amount of traffic through, but a large lake remained where paddocks once stood.

A small drain has been engulfed by a ferocious torrent of muddy water and locals were up till 3am yesterday with soldiers working to protect the nearby marae.

"It's the oldest marae in the Manawatu and there's a lot of history in there," Mrs Te Awe Awe said.

"We'd hate to see that get swamped. It would be dreadful."

Yesterday troops were building a barrier between the new lake and the main road, filling hundreds of sacks with dirt and compacting them to make them watertight.

Lieutenant Matt Watts said the rain was likely to cut access to Rangiotu again, so Army personnel were trying to equip locals as best they could.

"At least by having extra sandbags on hand they can deal with a situation immediately instead of having to wait for us to arrive," he said.

Looking out over the flooded plains as rain again began to fall, an exhausted-looking Mrs Te Awe Awe said residents would keep vigil overnight and act immediately if the water began to rise.

"We're going to try and save as much as we can but I don't know ... we might be lucky."