Cyclone Gabrielle: Pregnant mum flees Muriwai home days before giving birth
Tuesday, 21 February 2023
A heavily pregnant mother is in desperate need of suitable accommodation a week after Cyclone Gabrielle forced her to evacuate from her Muriwai home in the middle of the night.
Lis Garman, 38, has a due date of Tuesday. She has been staying with whānau while she tries to find a place with her 3-year-old daughter, Mayzie, and partner, Andy.
“It’s all just the worst possible timing,” she said.
Garman’s priority is finding somewhere to stay with a stable supply of water and power, near Waitākere Hospital and her midwife, should she go into labour.
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“My biggest worry is that I’ll have to have an emergency c-section like last time, so I want to be near my midwife if at all possible.
“I’ll also then be housebound and won’t be able to drive, so I’d really like somewhere I can walk to a community if I need to,” she said.
She would also like her daughter to be able to keep attending her kindergarten.
”She needs stability right now.”
Last Monday, a week before her due date, Garman went to bed thinking the rain “wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been a couple of weeks ago”.
By midnight, a neighbour was “banging” on a window telling the family they had to evacuate from their Domain Crescent home.
“I just grabbed a bag and left. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what I threw in that bag.”
The family then drove through Muriwai, picking up other evacuees as they went. They spent the first night at a friend’s house.
“There were nine adults, three kids and four dogs all in one house weathering the storm.”
Garman spent the week that followed staying with friends and family.
“Everyone has been so incredibly generous. The community has come together more than I could have imagined,” she said.
On Friday, the family were allowed back into their house “briefly” to collect some of their belongings.
“It’s a really difficult situation – we’ve got enough stuff for as far as getting to hospital and having the baby, but after that we don’t know what we’ll do.”
Geotechnical experts were still working to establish whether it was safe for the family to return home, she said.
They’d been told they could be out for a couple of weeks.
“The mental load has been huge. It’s been really tough.”
She said she spoke to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Temporary Accommodation Service on Friday and someone said they would call on Monday, but didn’t.
According to Auckland Emergency Management, there is still no safe access to Domain Crescent.
“The instability of the land around evacuated streets is a significant safety concern, and we need to carefully plan how we can enable people to access their homes to collect belongings and important items,” duty controller Adam Maggs said.
Steve Watson from the Temporary Accommodation Service said anyone displaced by the cyclone should register with the service as soon as possible.
More than 10,000 people were estimated to be displaced as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle, making it the largest level of displacement since the Christchurch earthquake of 2011, where it was estimated about 16,000 people were left homeless.