The clean-up is underway for Swamp Rd residents and businesses, who have many thousands of tonnes of silt to relocate after the recent catastrophic flooding events.
Peter Kopp lives on Swamp Rd and works as the yard manager of NRG Engineering Studio, near the Factory Rd intersection. A small creek runs behind the premises – a trickle, Peter says.
But on that ominous Friday earlier this month, with the ground already sodden, the trickle grew until it overwhelmed its banks and forged a new channel, streaming sideways into the engineering yard.
Around midday, friends helped Peter move his truck from under the path of what was quickly becoming a gushing wall of silt.
“Very shortly after that, it all went crazy,” he says.
He sheltered in the shed, standing first on the ground and then on a ladder as he watched the muddy waterfall lay waste to the yard.
Suddenly, something changed – a logjam breaking loose, perhaps – and the stream became a juggernaut of silt and mud, thundering over the bank, right onto the spot where his truck had been minutes before. He watched, stunned, as trees, a shed door and a picnic table were swept over the bank and through the yard.
He sought shelter at a nearby house and was eventually evacuated to Motueka with the help of the police, not knowing what he would find when he returned the following day.
The silt was up past his knees, 70 cm deep, and littered with debris. Not only that, 10cm of mud had settled through the adjacent workshop.
“It was just horrific,” says Peter, who has lived locally for 25 years. “I know this area. Never seen nothing like it.”
It took dozens of volunteers three days to scrape the worst of the mud out of the workshop, and Peter is humbled by how fast they responded and how doggedly they worked.
“There’s a lot of generosity. And the labour! We had a lot of people inside moving sludge.”
He is also hugely grateful to the team from Richmond-based Kiwi Excavations, who donated the use of a digger, loader and two trucks for the clean-up. Several of the company’s contracted drivers also opted to volunteer their time, and Challenge petrol station gave $500 in fuel to keep the machines running.
Truck and loader driver Peter Coleman says that when reports of the devastation came through, he just wanted to get out and help the public.
The crew also helped clear nearby driveways and properties, but the NRG yard was “a massive task”, the driver says, with an estimated 700 tonne removed over five days.
“There was just dirt for miles.”
Peter Kopp says he is shattered after the cleanup, and despite the tremendous camaraderie, he is still uneasy. In the bush above the workshop, the stream has again diminished to a trickle, but the landscape is severely scoured, with slips and logjams suspended on the hillside above.
Peter is wary of what the next bout of heavy rain will bring, and he hopes the threats will be mitigated before Swamp Rd is once again knee-deep in mud.
