Property owners have been devastated by flooding which hit small pockets of the region over the weekend.
Heavy rain began to hit the region on Thursday, closing State Highway 6 at Hira, the main route to Blenheim.
Whangamoa property owner Jess Patterson says her property is a “mess”.
Jess and her family live on a 5-hectare property on Kokorua Rd, with cows, sheep, chickens, dogs and a horse.
The state highway closure left them cut-off from the city.
Jess says, on Thursday, while both her and husband Nigel were at work, the rain started.
“Thankfully, at about 12pm our neighbours thought the water was getting a bit high so locked the horse and sheep in the top paddock.
“We thought Thursday night was the worst of it, but then at 6pm on Friday it started again, we had just got to our neighbours to check on them so stayed about an hour.”
She says by 9pm the water level had reached the house and around 2am Saturday morning, coinciding with high-tide, began flooding the kitchen.
“That’s when we called Civil Defence,” she says.
“The current was so strong, it pulled out our pool fencing, which was concreted in, it’s taken baleage three paddocks over, ripping the fences on the way, and those are really heavy bales.”
She says the entire property needs refencing after water and debris either completely flattened or smashed almost every one of them.
“The chickens all died, I took a photo of the water, and they were there, the water wasn’t near them, five minutes later and they were gone, it’s really sad.
“We just can’t make sense of how fast the water level came up, you can’t even imagine.”
Owner of Cable Bay Adventure Park, Richard Ussher, says more than 300mm of rain fell over a two-and-a-half-day period.
“We got pretty hammered,” he says.
Richard has a rain gauge capable of holding up to 150mm, which he emptied twice during the event.
“It was overflowing both mornings, so we definitely got more than 300mm.
He says damage to the property included quite a few slips and a main culvert which suffered “quite a bit” of damage.
Jess says the water reached the top of the doors, flooding the stables, and was also knee-deep in the garage.
“My car, the fridges, everything in the garage, the floor in the kitchen - the damage is just extensive to the whole property.”
They were waiting for the insurance company to reopen on Tuesday to get someone out to assess the damage so the clean-up could begin.
“It’s a bit frustrating that we can’t get straight into it, there’s so much to do.”
Jess says the community will rally to help each other.
“We’ve pretty much decided we will get together and go property by property to fix the fences.”
She says, first, they will have to pull together thousands of dollars to pay for the “thousands of posts”, wire, tractors and diggers that will be required to complete the job, as insurance doesn’t cover fencing.
Nigel is a volunteer for the Rai Valley Fire Brigade and Jess is due to launch a new business this week, so they already run a busy schedule.
“We’re doing what we can.”
Cleanup on the state highway began on Sunday with 15 different sites having slips and/or road damage between Rai Valley and Hira. The road reopened on Sunday evening, but Waka Kotahi journey manager Tresca Forrester says everyone needs to take care driving given the recent flooding and slip clearances.
“People should expect to see single lanes and traffic management on SH6 and other parts of the network.”
Remediation work was expected to begin this week.
To help the Kokorua community visit the Givealittle page.
