Source: Radio New Zealand
Flooding in Kiripaka, Northland. Supplied
A woman and two young children have been rescued from a car trapped by rising floodwaters in Northland.
Fire and Emergency said the rescue unfolded on Pigs Head Road, Whananaki, when the woman’s car became trapped between two impassable bodies of water.
Hikurangi fire chief Trevor Gallagher said the brigade initially thought the car had gone off the road and was submerged in floodwaters.
A specialist swift water rescue team – which had been stationed in Whangārei ahead of the storm – was dispatched to Pigs Head Road, and a rescue helicopter was put on standby.
However, when the Hikurangi Volunteer Fire Brigade arrived they found the driver had made her way through one flooded section of road, only to come to another where the water was even deeper.
With the water still rising, she was unable to go back the way she had come.
Gallagher said she got her car onto an area of higher ground and called for help just before noon on Thursday.
The water was also too deep for emergency service vehicles, so some of the firefighters, kitted out in lifejackets and safety gear, waded through the water to the car.
The primary-school-aged children were cold and frightened, but otherwise unharmed.
The brigade then called in an ex-army Unimog to drive through the flood and collect the trio, but while they were waiting a large contractor’s truck turned up.
The driver was able to collect the woman and children and drive them to the other side of the flood, where an ambulance crew was waiting to check them.
The water rescue team was stood down.
State Highway 1 is closed at the slip-prone Mangamuka Gorge in the Far North as a safety precaution. Supplied/NZTA
Gallagher said since then floodwaters had continued rising, with the nearby settlements of Ngunguru and Whananaki entirely cut off, and State Highway 1 closed by flooding at Whakapara.
A Pigs Head Road resident told RNZ he saw emergency vehicles on either side of a section of flooded road about 40 metres long.
He said so much rain had fallen overnight – about 200mm since midnight – that waterfalls were pouring off the embankments alongside the road.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
