At least five people have died and evacuations are continuing as fresh storm warnings are announced in regions of New Zealand already devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle and the prime minister warns of the likelihood of further fatalities.
As of 2.30pm on Thursday, 3,455 people had been registered by police as “uncontactable”, with some likely to be multiple reports for the same person.
“We believe the majority of those considered uncontactable simply cannot make contact with loved ones, so police are prioritising those who are in isolated areas,” said the prime minister, Chris Hipkins, warning that there were some people for whom the police held “grave concerns”.
After a visit to storm-hit Gisborne on Thursday, Hipkins described the damage as “extensive”, with basics like food and clean water still needed. He described the cyclone as an event on the scale of the Christchurch earthquake in 2011.
With the extent of damage still unfolding, New Zealand requested Australia’s help for disaster response on Thursday morning.
“I can confirm that NEMA [National Emergency Management Agency] has accepted an agency-to-agency offer for emergency response support and expertise,” Hipkins said.
Speaking earlier in the day, the prime minister said New Zealand would be forced to re-evaluate and remake its infrastructure in response to extreme weather events. “There’s no question that as a country we need to look at the resilience of our infrastructure, and we need to do that with a much greater sense of urgency than we’ve ever seen before.”
As the emergency response continued, fresh storms were arriving, with severe thunderstorm alerts issued on Thursday morning for the worst-hit areas.
National forecaster MetService issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Thursday afternoon for areas including the Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and the Hawke’s Bay region – three of the areas that have experienced some of the highest levels of flooding, damage and loss of life.
MetService said there were “very unstable conditions” including “heavy rain and hail”.
“Rainfall of this intensity can cause surface and/or flash flooding, especially about low-lying areas,” they said.
Fresh evacuation orders were issued on Thursday morning for residents of central Hawke’s Bay, with those around Drumpeel Road told to “leave immediately”.
Communication to the worst-affected areas remained difficult, with authorities relying on the Starlink satellite communications service from Elon Musk’s Space X to provide internet in some areas.
As of Thursday afternoon, about 102,000 households were still without power across the North Island, down from about 225,000 on Tuesday morning.
As flood waters recede, they are revealing huge destruction: homes partly immersed in silt and mud, or shifted off their foundations. “It’s just unbelievable the devastation,” Eastern police district commander Supt Jeanette Park said on Thursday morning. “When you see it, it’s hard to comprehend.”
On Thursday morning, Urban Search and Rescue said they were still rescuing people from their homes in Hawke’s Bay. In a radio interview, Napier-based Urban Search and Rescue specialist Ken Cooper said people had been climbing down from roofs to shelter in the upper parts of their properties.
“We’re finding people have moved to the roof voids of their properties, so we are still, at this moment, we are still rescuing people from their properties and there are a large number of people unaccounted for,” he said.
