'Devastation' in Kaiaua as the sea sweeps through homes
Friday, 5 January 2018
The waves came across the road and through the houses at Kaiaua.
Several streets were under water in the beachside town, on the western side of the Firth of Thames, on Friday afternoon.
And as the waters receded, emergency services were bracing for another high tide late on Friday night.
A senior firefighter called it devastation - and one resident said she hardly had time to blink.
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There had been no power all day, locals didn't know what this flood had left in their water tanks, and firefighters spent the afternoon pumping out residual floodwaters.
Past the graders pushing sand off East Coast Road was the house Freya Thompson rents, right across from the sea.
The waves swept straight through, leaving silty marks on her furniture.
Jeans hung on a clothesline in the garage got wet up past the knee.
Thompson had been told she should leave, but she wouldn't go without her cat.
Partway through Friday morning, she noticed the grass across the road was under water - 'then I sort of blinked and the driveway was full'.
'It never happened like this before.'
Tide marks around her property showed the water had dropped by mid-afternoon on Friday, but she couldn't stay the night at home.
The carpets were sodden and a fridge and a sofa from the garage had been literally floating around, she said.
'There's nothing I could do about it. It's just one of those things.'
Her Auckland-based grandson had been ringing to check in and, when she told him the water was in the house, he came down.
He brought a cage for her cat, too, so she was planning to return to Auckland with him for Friday night.
It was devastation around town, Kaiaua Volunteer Fire Force senior firefighter Tess Watts said.
She has been with the brigade about six years and was helping pump floodwaters off waterfront homes.
'We had [flooding] approximately this time last year … but it's never been this bad. A lot of these low-lying properties, its come straight into the houses and gone straight through,' she said.
'We've got diggers, graders - anything trying to remove sand from off the road.'
The brigade met at the station at 9am on Friday to plan and help evacuate a few people.
With high tide hitting about 10.40am, there wasn't much time for firefighters to gather their thoughts.
'It kicked off from there, really,' Watts said.
'It just moved in so quickly. Way too quick.
'Probably 50 to 55 minutes prior [to high tide] it was knee-high water.'
By high tide, the water was about waist-high along East Coast Rd.
The community had rallied to look after elderly residents, she said, and social media and a text message scheme helped.
Dave Murray was wandering down Kaiaua Rd in a high-vis raincoat.
He lives in Kowhai Ave, beside a farm.
'Within about 10 minutes, quarter of an hour, we saw our whole area under water.
'That was an hour before high tide. The water was coming down our street, just like someone had opened up a dam.'
At high tide, he saw waves about 2 metres high crashing over into the houses at the front, the foreshore, he said.