Floodwaters threaten Spreydon house

Press, 8 July 1986, Page 9

Floodwaters threaten Spreydon house

Surface flooding threatened to inundate a Spreydon man’s house during the heavy rain in Christchurch yesterday. Mr Graeme Donaldson, of 1 Sumner Street, watched anxiously yesterday as the water lapped the sandbags protecting his front and back doors.

He said he had got up every hour since midnight on Sunday night to monitor the flooding as water flowed on to his property.

After helping his wife, Debbie, get her car out of their waterlogged garage, and having seen her safely drive off to work at 10 a.m., Mr Donaldson turned his attention to the rapidly rising water on his property. He said that when he saw how high the water was, he decided to take the day off from his job as a waterworks mainlayer for the Paparua County Council, because he could not afford to leave the house unattended.

In March, Mr and Mrs Donaldson had also watched as their property was flooded, but no water came into the house then.

A neighbour, Mrs Margaret Ruifrok, was yesterday answering the telephone at Mr Donaldson’s house while he secured the outside of the house from the rising water.

Mrs Ruifrok said her

property had not been as badly affected. The sandbags had been provided by the Christchurch City Council, but Mr Donaldson said he was angry about the way the council had “fobbed off’ residents’ attempts to get something done about the poor drainage in their area.

When Mr Donaldson moved into the house four years ago he was given an assurance by the Christchurch Drainage Board that his property would not be at risk from flooding, he said. “The day after I moved in, my next-door neighbour came over and asked me if I knew my house got flooded,” Mr Donaldson said. Mr Donaldson contends the flooding is worse in the area since the southern motorway was built.

“The run-off has been incredible since then,” he said.

Although the water had not overflowed into the house, the smell from water left lying under the house would be bad, he said. The Donaldsons are members of a recently formed Neighbourhood Watch group which encompasses about 250 homes bordering Neville Street, Edinburgh Street, Lyttelton Street and Barrington Street.

The group did not yet

have a name, said Mrs Ruifrok, who is also secretary of the group. The group had taken their grievance to the Christchurch City Council, which had replied suggesting they join the Spreydon Neighbourhood Watch group already in operation, said Mr Donaldson.

Mrs Ruifrok said, “We do think we are a big enough group, and that if we join with Spreydon, our interests will be submerged.”

The deputy chief engineer of the Christchurch Drainage Board, Mr Don Cooper, said that the storm pipeline in the Sumner Street area was “virtually 0.K.” No more pipelines were planned for the area because there were restrictions on the increase of the flood flows in that area because of the flooding of the Heathcote River, he said.

Mr Cooper said that by about. 3 p.m. yesterday the water had receded from Mr Donaldson’s property and there seemed no danger of the water’s overflowing into the house, unless the high tide further affected the water level.

“There does not appear to be any danger now unless we get more heavy rain,” he said.