Auckland Flooding
What a crazy start to the school year! When we were visiting the United States, there was no summer in Auckland and it rained constantly, saturating the ground. I thought when I planned our trip that we would have a week back in town to enjoy summer activities (mainly beach trips!) while we acclimated to the New Zealand time zone and got ready for school to start a week later. Best laid plans, right? There was no summer weather upon our return - just more rain. So much rain that school didn’t start one week later either. While we stayed inside watching way too much Netflix, large swathes of Auckland flooded.
Some of the areas affected included a much-anticipated Elton John show. It was cancelled after many attendees had arrived but before he took the stage. Friends posted pictures of chest-high water as they left the abandoned concert. The Auckland Airport also flooded, cancelling international flights for days as well as quite a few domestic ones. The first floor of my daughter’s school was flooded causing extensive damage that required repurposing the gym and library into classrooms for the first term.
We were lucky - our house didn’t flood or otherwise suffer from any water damage or slips, but others weren’t so lucky. Some houses were completely destroyed, lots of vehicles were written off, and there are four Auckland deaths attributed to the January 27 flooding that dropped nearly eight inches of rain in a day on the city. The experience left the whole city in shock, especially when school was cancelled for the first few days of the year. Too many of us had flashbacks to covid lockdowns and the struggles with distance learning.
Just as people were cleaning up and the roads were more or less open after removing slips and fallen trees, MetService announced that a cyclone was heading straight for us. No one had time to process this properly, but we all dutifully checked to make sure we had three days of supplies on hand - just in case. Cyclone Gabrielle made landfall on February 12 and slowly moved south and east over the next few days. Northland and the east coast were especially hard hit, with 11 people dying, thousands displaced, and 244 homes “red-stickered” - meaning they were unsafe to enter at all. The destruction in Auckland was light compared to other parts of the country. Esk Valley was covered in meters of silt, parts of Northland are still without access to the rest of the country, and Gisborne lost access to drinkable water.
In the aftermath of the extreme weather events, the discussion surrounding climate change, infrastructure investments, and a “new normal” are rampant. There is speculation that the election to be held later this year will be the climate election as people become more aware of the destructive weather that will become more frequent. The big question is: will it be enough to spur system change? Given that we’re only a couple of weeks out and nearly everyone in Auckland doesn’t mention flooding anymore, I’d say there’s little chance.
