Wellington family cut off by swollen stream after damaging storm, ‘ghosted’ by authorities
Monday, 11 May 2026
Almost three weeks after flooding turned a stream into a raging torrent, a Wellington family is using a makeshift plank bridge to access their home as they wait for answers from the entities they say have “ghosted” them.
Sonia Moyes, Eugene Bradley and their two teenagers live on Happy Valley Rd in Wellington’s Ōwhiro Bay. The couple says it’s a green “paradise“, backed by bush-clad hills and full of wildlife.
Their home sits off the road, reachable by a driveway that dips to cross a small stream. Until a couple of weeks ago, the stream was a trickle. But during the storm that hammered the city with 70mm of rain on April 20, it became a deluge.
Bradley said the force of the water was “mind boggling”.
Read more:
Living in a flood zone: after dramatic escapes in the night, residents look to the future
In pictures: The damage wrought by the wild Wellington weather
“It was like Huka Falls. It was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Water had sluiced down the opposite hillside, joining the swollen stream to create a torrent that scoured out the banks, carried the couple’s two vehicles 500 metres downstream, and uprooted the natives they’d planted to shore up the sloping land.
The stormwater pipe beneath the driveway blocked, which meant the water, which at its peak was around 10 metres wide, did not recede for several days, trapping the family in their home.
Now, they’re accessing their home via a wobbly plank bridge, which is doable when the water is low, but any higher and it becomes dangerous to cross, they say.
Moyes contacted Wellington City Council at 9am on the day of the flooding. The council forwarded this to Wellington Water with a message saying, “please respond and fix!”
The couple understood that Wellington Water was responsible for clearing the stormwater pipe, while the council was responsible for the driveway and the stream.
It's not the first time the couple has asked for help. The Post has seen messages they have sent to the council over the months, alerting them to regular flooding at the property.
The last time Wellington Water visited, to clear debris, was about 10 months ago when the pipe blocked.
'I think you will agree from the photos it is a major safety and access issue,“ Bradley wrote a year ago.
Now, three weeks after the worst flooding yet, the couple say they have been bounced between the council and Wellington Water, and while they’ve had plenty of visits, nothing has been done.
“We've had multiple people come down and say, yes, this is urgent. Then nothing. We’ve sent emails, follow up emails, and nothing. We've totally been ghosted.”
Their last contact with the council was on Monday last week, when Moyes pointed out that rain was on the way.
When The Post visited the property it had been raining and the stream was swollen.
The water level was manageable - just, Moyes said.
“But when it’s more than that, you feel like you could potentially get swept away.”
The Post asked Wellington Water and the council what had gone wrong: why hadn’t they contacted the couple? And what was the plan?
A Wellington Water spokesperson referred queries to the council.
Council spokesperson Richard MacLean said the entities had been talking about the issue and would treat the blocked pipe “as a matter of some urgency”.
The Post asked MacLean if he could provide a timeline on discussions or action, but he said he could not.
Meanwhile, the couple, who run a gardening business, have been busy dealing with insurers as they try to replace their vehicles and tools.
The stream was a problem they did not need, Bradley said.
“It’s completely overturned our lives.”