Issue date
Wairoa Yacht Club is back up and running as recovery efforts continue for the small northern Hawke’s Bay town ravaged by Cyclone Gabrielle.
More than a dozen members and volunteers of the club situated on the banks of the Wairoa River, halfway between Napier and Gisborne, have been helping to clear almost a metre of silt, mud and debris from the club’s basement and boat ramp - almost two months after the storm struck.
The town of roughly 8000 residents was cut off from the rest of the region for days following the destruction of several bridges and landslips and flooding after the river burst its banks during the cyclone in February.
Gabrielle claimed 11 lives and displaced thousands across the North Island, with the clean-up expected to take months and cost more than $13 billion.
For Wairoa Yacht Club, progress has been slow as residents continue to deal with the aftermath of the unprecedented damage to the area.
“We have sailed the last couple of Sundays and a few of us even helped out at the Poverty Bay Champs a couple of weeks ago,” said Jill Metz-Mayhead, who has been involved with the club for decades and is the wife of commodore Adrian Mayhead.
“We had a lot of silt in our boat storage area which is below the club room but before we could even get to it, one of our members had to get a digger in there and clear a big enough area for us to open the doors to the place,” she said.
“We've only got it [the silt] out of the boat storage and off the concrete pad and the boat ramp and a little bit of the surrounding grassy area but it's just in big piles now.
“There was a lot of wood and stuff that was in the way as well, that was blocking access.”
Club members and volunteers cleared almost a metre of silt and mud from in and around Wairoa Yacht Club. Photo / Supplied
According to Metz-Mayhead, almost all of the club’s 20 members jumped in to help.
“We had a working day with about 14 of us on shovels and wheelbarrows. First, we had to haul out the boats so we could get access to start shovelling the mud and then we water-blasted it all out.”
Fortunately, the club didn’t suffer any major damage to its building or equipment.
“We had taken out the rescue boat prior to the cyclone. We always do that when we're expecting bad weather. We lifted the Optis onto the high racks, but they weren't high enough in this instance - they floated off and some of the other boats had sort of drifted around inside.”
Metz-Mayhead sai many of the town’s residents are still grappling with the effects of the cyclone.
“We have had three of our sailing families directly impacted with houses flooded and that sort of thing...and club members and the community have been helping them out as much as possible.”
RNZ reported last week that as part of the Government’s $50 million cyclone business recovery fund, more than 1600 applications for assistance - totalling $41 million - have already been received in Hawke’s Bay alone.
Just 4 per cent of these applications had reportedly been received from the Wairoa District.
