Residents of Wellington’s Duckworth Lewis guesthouse wake to metre-high floodwaters

Source: Radio New Zealand

Residents of a Newtown boarding house found their rooms swamped by metre-high floodwaters during the early morning flash flood in Wellington on Monday.

The Duckworth Lewis guesthouse, formerly the Caledonian Hotel, is across the road from the Basin Reserve cricket grounds. The torrential downpours flooded nearby streets and cars were submerged for at least half an hour.

One resident Mōkena Spooner-Hokianga, whose room is on the ground floor, said he woke up around 4am to find metre-deep water in his bedroom.

“It came up to the window, it was pretty high. All our rooms had been completely saturated by the flood water that came through… the whole hallway was full of water and heaps of rubbish.”

Another resident, Mike, said he heard something go “pop, saw foot-high water in my room and coming in through the front door. It was a deluge.” He woke other residents up. “It was quite dangerous, the water was up past my knees. I’ve never seen anything like that before. At that stage the water was only six inches high but I couldn’t open the door.”

Video footage filmed by Spooner-Hokianga showed the metre-deep water right across the four-lane stretch of Adelaide Road. “It’s receded now, but there was no warning, and some of us were asleep and were none the wiser to what was happening.”

About 35 to 40 residents live at the two-storey guesthouse, half of them on the ground floor. The residents went upstairs to take shelter during the early morning deluge before cleaning up.

But they had no idea where they would sleep tonight, he said. “I haven’t thought that far.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand