Massive flood damage disrupts Shore sports

Thousands of sports participants face months of playing at alternative venues across the North Shore in the wake of serious flood damage to major facilities.

School, club and social competitions and training sessions will all be disrupted.

Harbour Basketball, Tennis Northern and Badminton North Harbour are among organisations juggling limited indoor playing space while contemplating expensive repairs or rebuilds. Come summer sports season, volleyball and futsal will also be disrupted, when Netball North Harbour re-lays arena flooring.

Three groups’ facilities in Forrest Hill, situated east of the Northern Motorway, below Tristram Ave, were particularly badly hit. Badminton North Harbour fears its centre – the country’s leading badminton venue – will be out of action for nine to 12 months.

It was meant to have hosted the Oceania Championships in mid-February, but was left a smelly shell by the floods of 27 January. Water up to two metres-high flowed into the badminton hall, leaving sodden walls and warping beyond repair to the sprung flooring of its 11 courts.

“It’s total destruction of the lower ground floor,” chief executive Glenn Cox said. “It seems to have separated from boards and joinery underneath.”

Efforts were being made to dry out the stripped-down frame of the building which caters for 150,000 players a year.

Neighbouring Forrest Hill Tennis Centre has managed to get most of its courts back in play, but has lost its clubrooms, where water reached shoulder height. Chipboard floors were ruined, doors won’t close and a water main burst. The building would need replacing at a cost of $1.2 million, said Tennis Northern chief executive Chris Casey.

“It fried all our lights,” he said. These would cost $100,000-plus to replace. Without floodlights, senior inter-club matches have had to be moved elsewhere and casual evening play halted.

The small Becroft Tennis Club in Becroft Reserve, which like the other two Forrest Hill groups is accessed via Bond Cres, also had its clubrooms badly damaged. Water rose to 1.7 metres up interior walls, and the surface lifted badly from one of its four courts.

On the other side of the motorway, Eventfinda stadium – the home of Harbour Basketball and Harbour Gymnastics – also requires major work, including the “hugely expensive” replacement of sprung flooring.

Howzat? Cricketer’s car left stranded for weeks

For nearly six weeks, rising cricket talent Christian Scott has been unable to use the family car the Takapuna Grammar School (TGS) student drives to practice.

The vehicle was stranded in Bayswater’s Marine Parade Reserve by slips brought down by extreme rainfall on 27 January.

And Auckland Council failed to respond to repeated requests for information about when the slips might be cleared, before advising on Monday this week that the work would begin on Tuesday.

“We understand there are things way more important than this, but it’s frustrating,” says Christian’s mother Gillian Scott.

The family three times logged the issue and each time received notification the job was “closed”. .

The Scotts just wanted to know if the road down to the reserve would be restored. They were open to looking at other options for salvage, such as barging the vehicle out.

The car, a Mazda Axela, was vandalised while stranded, its door being dented.

The image of the vehicle – left high and possibly not dry – was used widely in media after the floods. It and a second vehicle were marooned in the reserve, near the old boating club building on Sir Peter Blake Pde, when the slip made the area a virtual island.

Christian was parked there after 7.30pm on ‘Flood Friday’, eating McDonald’s with a mate. They had no idea how serious the evening’s wet weather was becoming.

“It came down in a massive slide; it was fine one minute and then the next minute all this mud came down,” Gillian explained.

Realising they could not drive out, the teens clambered out on foot, heading to Christian’s friend’s home in Bayswater to “hunker down”.

The next morning, the family surveyed the damage, then logged its first online notice for assistance with the council.

On 31 January, it was advised work was on hold, but planned, but the same day, the online notice was changed to say the case was closed.

Gillian resubmitted the job and on 14 February was told it was closed again, because the car was not on council land. A further logging on 17 February, first said the case was in progress, then that it was closed.

The second stranded vehicle was driven across the slip, but the Scotts were reluctant to try this due to safety concerns and in case it damaged the car or invalidated their insurance.

She said her son – who this year broke a long-standing record held by cricketing great Bert Sutcliffe for most runs scored in a season at TGS – shared use of the car with his sister.