Volunteers battle heavy seas

Press, 26 June 1978, Page 1

Volunteers battle heavy seas

Waimairi Surf Lifesaving Club members were still battling to protect their clubhouse last evening, as high tides and heavy seas again swept the Canterbury coast. All available club members and about 50 volunteers had spent the day building a makeshift wall of driftwood and sand to try to keep the breakers at bay. The seas reached the wall at high tide, about 8 p.m., but it held up. “If we had not built the wall on Saturday we would have been in real trouble, so we kept working at it today—just in case,” a ciub spokesman said. The Taylors Mistake Surf Life-saving Club was hit harder than Waimairi by Saturday’s exceptionally high tides and heavy seas.

Waves rushed into an equipment shed during the morning, scattering gear over the beach and smashing a $lOOO surf rescue canoe. Part of the clubhouse foundation was damaged. However, the rough seas did not deter the club from holding its annual midwinter swim yesterday, and the clubhouse was not threatened at high tide last evening. The Kaikoura County Council and the Marlborough Harbour Board face a huge task in repairing the extensive damage wreaked by mountainous seas on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Erosion along the foreshore at the east end of Kaikoura township is the worst in the town’s history, and in some places the beach now extends to the edge of the esplanade. On Friday night, high seas carried boulders across the esplanade, and swamped a waterfront fishprocessing plant. Seawater poured into two houses in Avoca Street. One, occupied by a fisherman, Mr G. Hunt, was shifted on its foundations by the force of the water and rubbish. At daybreak on Saturday, several other residents found their properties littered with piles of seaweed and driftwood up to Im deep. Yesterday they began to clean up, but this is ex-

pected to take several weeks. The Marlborough Harbour Board also faces big costs in repairing Kaikoura’s south wharf, which was half demolished by the sea on Friday night. Heavy planking was splintered like matchwood, and much of the wharf's concrete protection works were broken away or badly undermined. Planks on the north wharf were lifted and broken, and the much-used launching area near Jimmy Armers beach had disappeared on Saturday morning. Harbour Board officials are expected to arrive in Kaikoura today to make a full assessment of the damage. Two slipways were swept away at Port Robinson. near Cheviot. An old boat, the Paroto, which had been beached there about 10 years ago, was washed up on to the slips, demolishing them. A small boat on one of the slipways was washed out to sea and another slipway was also in danger of being washed away, said a fisherman there. Although the seas had abated, thev were still “pretty rough,” he said. Heavy rain on Fridav night also affected mad and rail links near Kaikoura. Several small slips reduced traffic to one-way through the Hundalees overnight, but these were cleared early on Saturdav. The railway line south of Kaikoura was also blocked for a short time, but train schedules were not affected. Steady rain in Christchurch on Friday night — 14mm was recorded up to 9 a.m. — caused street flooding in the city. Clarendon Terrace, in Opawa, was closed after the Heathcote River overflowed, and some gardens in the street were covered by water up to Im deep. However, the river did not rise high enough to threaten any houses. The Christchurch weather office last evening predicted fine, clear weather for today, followed by a southerly change and more showers for tonight.

“But this should not be nearly as bad as the weekend storm,” a spokesman said.