Ten people trapped by rising floodwaters in west Auckland have been rescued by the fire service.
A heavy downpour dropped 65mm of rain on west Auckland in just one hour, at about midday yesterday, causing flash-flooding and inundating nearly 180 homes, some of them waist-deep.
The Fires Service’s northern communications centre said homes had been flooded in Glen Eden (65), Titirangi (43), Henderson (30), Avondale (20), West Harbour (10), and Te Atatu (8).
Multiple people had been trapped in floodwaters on Great North Road in New Lynn and there were also reports of people trapped in shops in the suburb, the service said.
Crews set up lines to rescue those trapped, saying they were suffering from exposure.
It had also received reports of other flooding in nearly a dozen suburbs: Kaukapakapa, Devonport, Parnell, Remuera, Eden Terrace, Blockhouse Bay, Morningside, Massey, Westgate, Whenuapai, and New Lynn.
The service had activated its “multiple incident procedure”, it said.
It had received more than 500 emergency calls since 6am, averaging a call every 24 seconds.
A slip had ploughed into a house in Glendene on Butterworth Drive, and another slip had been reported on Trig Hill Rd on Waiheke Island.
Record amounts of rain over the last two days flooded parts of the Auckland region, Northland and Coromandel.
The Fell-Coates family in Mount Albert was among those whose houses had flooded today.
Lee Coates said the storm water drain could not cope, and water had started coming up through it instead of draining away. Her daughter Keira said water rose into the house within about ten minutes.
“You couldn’t see the floor, you could just see water up to your knees.”
Power out to thousands of homes
Despite the efforts of crews to restore power after yesterday’s bad weather, more than 4000 homes, mostly in west Auckland, had now lost power.
Electricity firm Vector Ltd said a fault caused by a damaged line had affected almost 3000 homes in Glen Eden.
Another fault in the nearby suburb of Sunnyvale cut power to another 1400 houses.
MetService said a trough was crossing central New Zealand today, while a separate low would move south-east across the northern North Island.
The weather has caused slips and surface flooding in Wellington too.
Metservice also warned of severe gales in the northern North Island, with northerly gales in the morning swivelling round to the west yesterday afternoon.
Auckland civil defence said it was “a fast moving and very unstable system with a risk of small tornadoes anywhere across the region”.
Great Barrier Island was likely to bear the brunt, with gusts of up to 120km/h possible, civil defence said.
