Seventh flood beats farmer

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 1

Seventh flood beats farmer

Special correspondent

Mr Ernie White packed a few things to move out of his farmhouse at Makaraka, south of Gisborne, last evening. He had survived six floods since 1944. The seventh was beating him. The muddy water flowing fast about a metre and a half deep over his farm was at the top of thd farmhouse steps yesterday afternoon. He shrugged his shoulders.

pit’s still raining hard," he said, “The worst of it has not come down from the hills yet. When it does it is going to meet the spring tides pushing the river back.

;Mr White was born and brought up>in the old farmhouse that now stands on the property next door, a few hundred metres from the Makaraka-Matawhero Community Hall.

The:first Hood he remembers was in 1944, when he was 17. Yesterday the crops were under the flood; waters for the sixth time. :

Mr : White ;stood yesterday afternoon on the still-dry floorboards of the (“new house” he built 24 years ago. The land around it was built up because of the earlier floods.

The I precautions were not enough for this flood. “About four in;the morning the water Jstarted spilling out of the roadside ditches;” he said. Mr jWhite and his sons then moved the furniture, stacking it on blocks of wood. The carpets were lifted.

“The insurance will pay to put them all back,” he said of the carpet. "They are just happy that we save them each time.”