A national state of emergency has been declared in New Zealand after widespread damage from Cyclone Gabrielle, the country’s worst storm in generations.
Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty made the declaration at 8.43am on Tuesday as Kiwis woke to flooding, power loss, road closures and phone network outages from the massive storm.
Thousands of people have been evacuated across the country, at least 225,000 were without power, and fears are held for the lives of several New Zealanders.
And still, the full extent of Cyclone Gabrielle’s wrath is unclear, with some isolated communities – including Wairoa and towns in Tairawhiti – unable to be reached by land, sea or air, or communicated with.
“We don’t have a full understanding of the impact there. And that makes us feel anxious,” Mr McAnulty said.
What is known is that much of the Hawke’s Bay is under water, with rescues by police boat and helicopter taking place when weather allowed on Tuesday.
“I’ve been in the region over 20 years and this is by far the biggest (storm) … people have not seen a storm like this. It’s a very, very significant event,” Hawke’s Bay civil defence spokesman Ian Maxwell told Radio NZ.
It is just the third time a national declaration has been issued, after the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The storm is New Zealand’s worst since 1988, and the damage may surpass the devastation of Cyclone Bola in that year.
“It’s the most extreme weather event that we’ve experienced in a very long time,” Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said.
“Our focus right now is on the immediate response. It’s on making sure that people have a roof over their head. That they have a meal. That their families are well cared for.”
The cyclone, which formed in the Coral Sea last week, moved steadily towards New Zealand and passed along the northern rim of North Island between Sunday and Tuesday.
By 7pm local, it was east of the NZ mainland, but its massive size continued to whip up destructive winds all across North Island.
MetService spokeswoman Lisa Murray told Radio NZ huge rainfall and gale-force winds meant “there’s a lot of places in trouble”.
“It really is widespread across the North Island.”
Late on Tuesday, a person was found dead on the beach at Bay View, north of Napier, in one of the hardest-hit areas.
The death is yet to be connected to the storm.
Grave fears are also held for a volunteer firefighter who was inside a house when it collapsed in Muriwai, west of Auckland, on Tuesday morning.
The navy is also searching for two boats in waters north of Auckland.
News outlet Stuff reported people were trapped in cars along the flooded State Highway 5 between Napier and Taupo, where communications are patchy.
Around a dozen seasonal workers from Tonga were trapped on top of buildings all day when floodwaters rose near Hastings.
Landslips, treefall and flooding have deeply impacted infrastructure, with power transmission agency Transpower said it was facing a “grid emergency” with some outages to last “days to weeks”.
High winds have also forced mass-scale flight cancellations, displacing tens of thousands.
Transport authority Waka Kotahi reports more than 40 road closures, including State Highway 1 in several places and key arterial roads in the Coromandel and East Coast.
Fire and Emergency NZ reported 1842 storm-related emergency calls, but others are unable to communicate, with hundreds of mobile phone towers knocked out.
On top of physical damage to property and livelihood, Mr Hipkins said he expected a serious mental health toll from NZ’s latest disaster.
“If you think about the last sort of decade and a half or so, we’ve had everything from earthquakes, natural disasters, volcanic eruptions, weather events. It is a lot,” he said.
“We’ve dealt with everything.”
The storm prompted parties to cancel the first week of parliament for the year, allowing the government to focus on the storm and for MPs to be in their communities.
By Ben McKay in Wellington
