Floodwaters leave Nelson street scoured out

Thursday, 18 August 2022

A video shows the damage in Devenish Place, Atawhai, after a river of water and debris ran down it. (First published August 18, 2022)

Residents of a Nelson street have described a raging torrent down the road with rocks being pushed through the water like “torpedoes”.

Ray Scott said the sheer volume of water in Devenish Place, Atawhai, was like “a desert flood, from nothing to just this deluge. It just got worse and worse.”

“The main danger in my mind were rocks in the water, they were like torpedoes, and just being thrown down the road and could have broken legs if you had tried to cross the road.”

Johan Svenson faced a raging torrent streaming down Devenish Place when he came home on Wednesday at around 2.30pm. A digger cleared debris and a ute ferried him across the street to his home.

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“The road was covered, wherever you had a hedge or a tree or a postbox, it just annihilated them, just took them out.”

“Some really, really big rocks started tumbling down, it just got wild, just absolutely wild.”

Johan Svenson and his daughter were ferried home across the street by a ute after a digger had made a path in the rubble.

“It was unreal.”

Svenson found kokopu fish on his driveway.

“I was at one stage expecting goats to come down.”

Neighbours who spoke to Stuff expressed gratitude to contractors who worked through the night, and also commented on how the neighbourhood and community had banded together.

The street has been left deeply scoured and unuseable – with concrete guttering broken off like pieces of Lego and a chasm running in the middle of it.

The damage in Devenish Place, Atawhai, north Nelson, on Thursday morning.

Engineering geologist and resident Rob Hunter, from Terra Firma Engineering, documented the almost total destruction of Devenish Place. On Thursday morning he said a blocked culvert had been cleared, redirecting the water from the street and revealing the extent of the damage.

Engineering Geologist Rob Hunter filmed a culvert blocked by a landslide causing a river down the road in Atawhai, Nelson. Developers from nearby are sending a digger to try to clear the blockage.

“It’s completely fine, we’ve got power, freshwater supply is all on, [but] wastewater and stormwater is all broken for most houses.”

The road had been almost entirely scoured away up to two-metres deep in some places, exposing (and breaking) wastewater pipes.

Hunter said the receding water had also exposed several confused eels.

He said the local heroes of the hour were the Edridge contractors digger drivers, who were waiting on standby at the nearby Bayview development and leapt into action when the water broke over the street.

The receding floodwaters on Devenish Place revealed a lot of damage and several confused eels.

“As soon as the creek started coming down the road they came straight over,” Hunter said.

Have you been affected by flooding in the Nelson region, or have photos or video to share? Get in touch at newsdesk@nelsonmail.co.nz

“There were so many rocks and things in the road, they just kept going up and down clearing it to stop the water coming up to the houses. The drivers did that all night long, so we could rest easy.”

He said the community was sharing offers of support to their neighbours, but in the meantime people were mostly ok – if somewhat trapped.

“We’re all safe.”