Flood strikes just as previous damage repaired

The ground floor of a Bayswater couple’s home was flooded in the 27 January deluge just a couple of months after renovations repairing previous flood damage were completed.

Chris Mullane and Georgina Greville’s Bayswater Ave home first flooded in March 2021, but repairs were only finished in November due to delays caused by Covid and supply shortages.

“It wasn’t fun living in a construction site for months and months” said Greville.

The couple spent more than $6000 installing a drain in front of their garage, which at least restricted the water level in the latest flood to ankle-deep, although carpet, walls and boxes of valuable books were still damaged.

The house is at the foot of a steep driveway, down which water flows from the road above.

Mullane said the subcontractors who are responsible for maintaining the drains aren’t doing an adequate job, only checking them once a year. The Devonport RSA member said the situation is so bad he’s had to clear the gutters on his own on multiple occasions.

Greville said the stormwater drains aren’t big enough to handle heavy rainfall and believes action is needed. “If council or Watercare or whoever it is actually fixes the problem at the top, we wouldn’t have flooding”.

The couple were on a trip in Rotorua on ‘Flood Friday’. They had been aware of the heavy-rain warning, putting sandbags in front of their garage and opening back gates so water could escape. They learned of its extent via a neighbourhood social-media group.

“We were sitting there not sleeping, just worried about what we were going to come back to,” said Greville.

They arrived home on Sunday and with neighbours got to work filling more sandbags to prepare for last Wednesday’s torrential rain, when they suffered no further damage.

“We’re lucky that the New Zealand spirit of helping your neighbour is still around” said Mullane.

The couple said their next move was to hire a water engineer to assess the property and find out what more to do to prevent future damage.

A neighbour, who did what he could to slow water entering his property from the street and flowing down the drive, said the height of Bayswater Rd did not help. The road should be stripped back and the footpath lowered, he said.

“It’s also the lack of drainage and infrastructure” with more homes, including apartments, being built in the area. While he had previous flooding in his six years there, Friday night was a “doozy”. He had been at the abandoned Elton John concert and returned by bus and ferry around 10.30pm to find water in his home’s lower level and yard. “There was serious lack of communication by officials,” he said.