Redcliffe Bridge in early March in the weeks after Cyclone Gabrielle hit the East Coast. Photo / Paul Taylor.
Six months ago today, a National State of Emergency was declared as Cyclone Gabrielle began to make landfall in New Zealand.
While the storm has long since passed, the destruction remains for many parts of the North Island, but particularly along the hardest-hit East Coast.
Chris Hyde, editor of Hawke’s Bay Today, told The Front Page podcast that there remain “significant pockets of devastation” across the region, particularly in rural Hawke’s Bay where some people remain completely cut off.
“I think it’s really challenging for the people that are in that situation, because most people have moved on and with their lives, but these people can’t, they are stuck in a long, long process to get back to normality if they ever can get back to normality.”
Even those in urban areas that weren’t as severally affected during the storm, the ongoing infrastructure damage can be felt in the city centres as key transport links remain out of action. The Redcliffe Bridge has recently reopened, but there is no timeline for the repair of other links such as the Brookfields Bridge.
Hyde said that six months on, most stories they write continue to have some element of the cyclone and the aftermath in them, with events such as the whitebait season having to be cancelled due to the toxicity of the local rivers.
While the region remains a stoic, provincial area, Hyde believes it will take a while for those who were affected to completely move on.
“I don’t think anyone that has been in a situation where you have to climb onto your roof, with all your possessions floating away, with your family, maybe your pets, and there were hundreds to thousands of those people in Hawke’s Bay who had to go through that experience. And the idea that it’s not going to have ramifications for mental health, shell shock, all of that sort of thing, it’s not going to go away for a long time. People will remember it forever.”
That struggle is why Hyde is not surprised that several key Government ministers based in the area have quit or left Cabinet, despite frustration from locals of the lack of local representation.
“I think it’s interesting because it shows possibly the levels of stress that those people have been under, particularly in the case of Kiri Allen perhaps.
“It’s been a massive job to be a leader or a politician over the past six months. And listening to heartbreaking stories over and over again and trying to find solutions to it, it wears people down. I can totally understand how that happens.”
So how do locals feel about the Government and council response overall? What difficulties are holding up the distribution of grants and funding? And is the region open for business yet?
Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear more about life on the East Coast six months on from Cyclone Gabrielle.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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