House damage ‘terrible’

Press, 12 July 1983, Page 1

House damage ‘terrible’

By

JOHN WOODWARD

A Tuamarina resident, Mr Jack Andrews, watched helplessly from a hill overlooking the township as floodwaters ripped through his home on Sunday morning.

Mr Andrews and his wife, Pix, were airlifted to safety from the Tuamarina cemetery hill along with 30 other people soon after midday on Sunday.

The drama for the Andrews, whose home backed on to a tributary stopbank leading to the nearby Wairau river, began at 5 a.m. on Sunday.

Mr Andrews said that he was alerted by the local Civil Defence officer, Mr John Dodson, of the rapidly rising waters of the river. His first thought was for the safety of his elderly, crippled neighbour, Mrs Ilene Drake.

After putting his wife and neighbour in the family

station waggon, Mr Andrews “thought it might be a good idea to get the boat out.”

With help from Mr Dodson and another neighbour, Mr Ivan Drake, he managed to get his boat from a shed at the rear of the house. His wife, in the meantime, had driven the car to the relative safety of the elevated main highway. “By the time we got the boat out, it was flooding so we got into it,” he said. “The water was going so fast we could not handle it.”

He managed to start the engine of the boat and manoeuvre it round his house to the dry land where his wife and neighbour were waiting. Mr Andrews estimated that it took 10 minutes from the time he left his house before the raging waters of the river had engulfed his property. There was no time to save anything.

The sight which greeted the Andrews on returning home yesterday morning was one of total devastation.

The floodwaters had surged almost to roof level, ripping out the downstream side of the house and taking much of the furniture with it.

The furniture which stayed in the house lay in a mess of silt and rubble against the inside walls which still stood.

The steady stream of water continued to flow around and under the house, yesterday as sandbaggers desperately fought to stem the flow from the gaping hole in the adjacent stopbank.

Apart from losing most possessions, Mr Andrews was particularly upset over the loss of his local history collection, which had been stored in a shed at the rear of the property. “It was the best collection

of local history in the district,” he said. He described his collection of photographs, records, and artefacts dating back to the early settlement of Tuamarina as “priceless and irreplaceable.” His only comment on viewing the havoc wreaked on his home by the flood yesterday was that he felt terrible. “I felt terrible yesterday and I feel terrible today.” His two adult sons, Kevin and Graeme Andrews, began the task of cleaning up, removing sodden clothes still hanging in the wardrobe of the master bedroom.

An hour after arriving at the scene, Mr Andrews had still not wanted to enter his home.

Mr Graeme Andrews said that his father would be making a claim on the loss of his home to the Earthquake and War Damage Commission.