Heavy rain and wind hits Wellington region bringing down trees, flooding roads

Source: Radio New Zealand

Heavy rain and wind is hitting the capital, flooding streets in Lower Hutt, closing multiple schools, cutting off power, and bringing trees and debris down in the city.

Meanwhile, the entire Manawatū-Whanganui region is under a state of emergency, where some evacuations have taken place in Manawatū and on the coast of the Tararua district.

Waipā and Ōtorohanga in South Waikato remain under a states of emergency after significant flooding over the weekend.

In Wellington, regional and metro trains have stopped, while ferries and flights have been cancelled.

Streets in Epuni and Naenae appear flooded, with reports on social media of some cars getting stuck in Lower Hutt.

On Monday morning, Powerco said about 23,000 properties across its network had lost connections, and in the Wellington region about 10,000 had had their connections cut.

The storm has left a big mess for the owner of a Polish restaurant at Plimmerton, north of Wellington, to clean up after an exterior wall blew in.

Owner of Topor Bistro, Steve Askew said luckily another local business alerted them as otherwise they might not have been back in till Wednesday.

“I’m sure we’re going to be closed a couple of weeks,” he said.

“All of the ceiling on the inside has gone. All the studs and stuff they’re quite wet, I don’t know if they need to be replaced or if they can just be dried out. The hole in the wall needs to be fixed.”

Askew said the kitchen and main appliances are on the other side and escaped.

He said up till this the bistro had not been doing too badly recently.

A growing list of schools in the Wellington region are also closed due to the terrible weather.

Those include Wellington High School, Wellington East Girls’ College, and St Orans College in the Hutt Valley.

Rongotai College in Wellington has closed for the day with tree debris littering its grounds.

Principal Kevin Carter said he was at the boys’ school in Kilbirnie at 5pm on Sunday and everything was fine, but on Monday morning it was a different story.

“The grounds are covered with branches from trees that have come down … It’s pretty wild and unsafe here on the south coast,” he said.

Some gutters were down but otherwise buildings were not damaged by the look of it. He had had a quick walkaround and would do a closer check later in the hopes they could clean up and the wind would drop.

Carter said they would decide later whether to reopen tomorrow. All families had been advised by email or text the school was closed, he said.

Air New Zealand’s chief operating officer Alex Marren told Nine to Noon nearly 100 flights have been cancelled in and out of Wellington on Sunday and Monday morning.

All flights in the capital, Palmerston North and Napier have been paused until at least 11am, at which point the airline will reassess the weather conditions, Marren said.

She said there had been some “infrastructure impacts” and the airline was working closely with Wellington Airport on that.

In Wairarapa, evacuations are underway in Masterton due to the threat of falling trees.

Wairarapa assistant commander Ian Wright said it had been a busy night with weather-related call outs, which continue, and that trees coming down were the biggest risk.

He said there are shallow rooted trees on Lincoln Road that are “very, very unstable, so both roads have been closed and the people have been evacuated”.

There have been no reports of injuries.

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