inundated in terrifying deluge

“I was standing in the water in bare feet. The multi-plug was actually under the water and it was boiling and I was standing in it, in jeans that were drenched, I don’t how I didn’t get electrocuted.”

Alex says he won’t easily forget the scenes in his street that night, of an inflatable boat bringing out kids, the elderly and pets. And cars with their fried electrics, with windscreen wipers and lights randomly going and horns and alarms sounding.

The next morning, after his father and brother stubbornly stayed on, the grim task of ripping up carpets and dumping furniture began. Water had receded to beneath the house, but insurance company advice to dry things out was futile.

Alex spent a couple of nights in the yellow-stickered house, even though it was unsafe and contaminated. He wanted to salvage what he could, but mould set in, claiming the last possessions.

Throwing out the likes of a shirt collection amassed over 20 years was one thing, but much harder is the loss of treasured family items.

His mother, who died a few months ago, had kept a journal of her three children’s daily lives. He picked this up, only to have the ink run off the page.

Now his once busy stretch of Nile Rd is eerie to look in on. “Everyone was there initially, now there’s no one there apart from tradesmen and the odd person coming and going.”

Financial stresses have quickly mounted. While the insured trio were able to spend two nights in a city hotel and then in serviced apartments, “we had to find that and they pay it back.” After a week staying with his sister, Alex gratefully accepted his colleague’s offer to let him stay nearer to work.

There has been no pay-out for contents yet and masses of time spent collating what has been lost.

Alex, 43, worries how they will recover. He wants to find a place to be with his daughter. He considers the flood was a freakish event, and says when it is fixed he would return to the home his parents bought more than 30 years ago, and from which he then went to Westlake Boys High School.

But he has questions about why the flooding was so bad and so localised.

“We’ve never had any flooding issues whatsoever. Not so much as an inch on the lawn,” he says.

Although the Wairau Creek is nearby, he said, the water in Nile Rd wasn’t a torrent from it. He is curious why flooding did not occur further down its channel. “The water just wasn’t going anywhere, there was no current.”

He wonders if delays in upgrading the Alma Rd pumping station contributed to pooling in his neighbourhood.

“Something happened that slowed down the water getting away.”

After the flood... Caleb Alex, who wants to return to his family home when it’s repaired, says for now he’s “virtually homeless”