Big clean up begins after storm flood hit Ngongotahā near Rotorua

Monday, 30 April 2018

Brooke Ellis and children survey their two submerged cars in their back garden.

Brooke Ellis holds her forefinger and thumb a few centimetres apart - that's how close floodwaters came to entering her house.

Shouting over the generator pumping water from her Ngongotahā Road garden, Ellis said 'it all happened so fast'.

Ryan and Andrea Pollards' flood struck home.

In the space of 30 minutes, the picnic table and two cars in the garden were submerged.

She and her family had been able to move one car from their back garden, but the other two are done for.

Mud left behind at the Pollards' Oakland Place home.

Minister of Civil Defence Kris Faafoi speaks to Ngongotahaā resident Elliott Pollard.

* Rotorua and South Canterbury clobbered by flooding, Coromandel fears high tide

And she's one of the lucky ones.

From left, unaffected neighbours Karen Walsh, Suzanne Ryan and Jeanette Edwards were handing out food and keeping spirits up.

As Oakland Place resident Jenny Pollard squelches over sodden carpet, she points to the books in the grandkids' bedroom.

'All their books and their treasures - gone.'

More heavy rain is forcast for Rotorua a day after after the district experienced its wettest hour on record on Sunday.

Jenny lives just around the corner from her son and daughter-in-law Ryan and Andrea Pollard and they, too, recount a tale of incredibly fast-rising water.

Andrea was at work when her nine-year-old son rang.

'Mum, it's up to our ankles in the house and Dad's packing our bags,' he told her

Pioneer Avenue residents begin the clean-up.

On Monday in the aftermath, the entire house was awash with mud and silt. Water marks on the wall indicated the deluge was at its peak.

Andrea said they evacuated to a friend's house up a hill behind their property.

Geoff Box said his entire downstairs was flooded.

Her in-laws Jenny and husband Elliott's property suffered pretty badly, too.

Outside their mud-soaked garage, Elliott said he was gobsmacked on Sunday when 'standing at the window watching the caravan float down the road'.

Don Newport shows just how high the floodwaters rose in his garage.

It wound up 100 metres away from where it started.

'It's unreal to see it now when it was underwater yesterday.'

Jenny Pollard stands where her caravan used to be parked, until the flood struck and sent it down the road.

At that point, Karen Walsh, Suzanne Ryan and Jeanette Edwards approached the senior Pollard household. Each was carrying a tray of food.

Edwards said they were neighbours and had luckily been unaffected, but wanted to do something to help those less fortunate.

'It's the camaraderie of the neighbourhood. We don't know each other that well, but we're all part of the same family now,' Elliott said.

Minister of Civil Defence Kris Faafoi also wandered on to the scene at the senior Pollards.

'It's going to be a big job for these families to get back on their feet. A big clean up job,' he said.

Faafoi praised Civil Defence and emergency staff. They'd been working through what was 'obviously very difficult circumstances'.

He said the extent of the flooding was a surprise.

'We were lucky it wasn't any worse,' he said.

On Western Road, Don Newport was also surveying his flood-struck garage.

It wasn't rain - it was a solid wall of water - that's how he described Sunday's deluge.

'At 3pm it was normal. By 4pm we were underwater.'

Newport's lived at the address for 54 years and had never seen anything like Sunday.

'It just came down in such a hurry. It wasn't rain, it was solid water.'

Newport was spending Monday 'cleaning up, tidying up and taking things to the dump'.

He, too, was counting his blessings - the family's main living area is upstairs.

Acoss the road, neighbours Hemana Curtin, Rayna Smith and Mihi Dehar all shared a similar story of rapidly rising water.

Curtin said when his family was told to evacuate, he had to carry his children, aged two and four, over his shoulders.

Smith said she'd been to the shop for an ice cream and in the time it took her to eat it, the water had risen from nothing to deep enough to dive into.

Geoff Box was also surveying the damage at his family home where, unluckily, their bedrooms were on the ground floor.

'It's just all mud,' he said.

'The carpets are screwed, the kids' playroom, everything that's downstairs.'

A number of residents praised the Civil Defence and fire brigade. And Newport was able to find a small silver lining.

'The beer fridge tipped over, but none of the beer got broken.'