About 600 Napier Properties Damaged by Flooding: Report

This story was originally published on RNZ.co.nz and republished with permission.

Almost 600 properties in Napier have been officially damaged by flooding and it is feared that more have not been reported.

Trees and slips blocked roads, utility poles were tipped over, debris fell off cliffs and walls collapsed onto cars in today’s flooding four weeks ago.

The chaos caused by the flooding has been detailed in a new Napier City Council report to be presented to the audit and risk committee this week.

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At the end of last month, 115 properties were uninhabitable and 386 were damaged but still habitable.

Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise thought the numbers could be higher.

“Those are the ones we know about, so there will be a series of floods affected in private private residences that would not necessarily have been reported to the council for any reason.”

Much of Napier’s water system is only built to handle a one-in-five-year rainfall event; this year it was a deluge of one in 250 years.

Manhole covers appeared in the worst affected areas, releasing highly diluted raw sewage into already flooded streets.

Napier had not been able to update all of its systems since new regulations went into effect in the 1990s.

Wise said it was difficult to cope with the impact.

“We experienced an event far beyond what we within our network had the capacity to deal with … so obviously there is no way we can deal with an event of one in 250 years.”

Some buildings in the city were fortunate enough to escape serious damage, but the MTG (Museum Theater Gallery) was flooded, although no catalog was reached.

The Centennial Hall in McLean Park would be closed for up to 18 months, Wise said.

The number of evacuees due to floods peaked at 173.

At the end of last month, 147 people were still housed in the council’s emergency shelter with nowhere else to go.

Dee Penno of Hawke’s Bay Properties dealt with the rental homes and said the aftermath of the floods had hit homes hard, especially with more merchants in town to repair the floods.

“The motels are full of all the beneficiaries who cannot find accommodation and shops that come from Auckland to fix. There is simply nothing to rent.”

This story was originally published on RNZ.co.nz and republished with permission.