Wild winds keep fire crews under pump

Cyclone Gabrielle hit most local volunteer fire brigades harder than January 27 flood event, with some crews receiving almost non-stop calls at the storm’s height. Downed trees, landslips and leaking roofs were the most common problems, as well as vehicles trapped or damaged by floodwater, combined with power and communication outages.

However, officers said the situation could have been much worse if so many people had not heeded the many warnings to stay home, hunker down and keep off the roads.

Leigh’s chief fire officer (CFO) Kevin Lawton said they attended countless trees down across roads, but thankfully there was little traffic.

“We dealt with multiple trees down under pretty hairy conditions – one came down in the road in front of us as we were on our way to another one,” he said. “But I’d like to say a huge thanks to the community –people staying at home made a hell of a lot of difference.”

Leigh was one of the busiest local stations, with constant calls throughout the Sunday and Monday of the cyclone to help with lifting roofs and landslips, in addition to downed trees.

When local phone coverage dropped out, crew members stayed at the station in case they could help.

“We made the call to man our station during the night with a couple of people there because the phones weren’t working, so even if people couldn’t get 111, they could come and bang on the door where we had working radios,” Lawton said. Other stations kept most busy by the cyclone’s relentless south-easterly winds were Wellsford, Mangawhai and Waipu. Mangawhai dealt with around 40 official callouts and almost as many unofficial issues, including downed powerlines, flooded roads and fallen trees, while in Waipu, incidents included a cabin that slid down a bank and a car in a drain.

Wellsford station officer Tarah Jones said there had been around 35 callouts to cope with mainly downed trees blocking roads, but also slips, damaged roofs and people trapped in cars by rising floodwater. “There were definitely a lot more calls than for the last one, with a lot more slips and trees down,” she said. “Flooding wasn’t really a major issue in our area, but the wind definitely was.”

Matakana CFO Jeremy Gibbons agreed. “Gabrielle was definitely more windy and caused more physical damage than the previous ex-cyclone,” he said.

The crew experienced the cyclone’s effects first-hand, firstly when they lost power and cell service at the station and then when flooding on Omaha Flats Road forced them to evacuate all the trucks to a volunteer’s homes on higher ground.

“Everything is more challenging when you have no power and no communication network available,” he said. “However, Fire & Emergency maintain a pager network, so we were still notified of any calls, even if the additional information provided by our response app was not available.”

Gibbons added that the flooding didn’t damage the station itself, though it came close and the building was completely surrounded by water for a while. Meanwhile, Warkworth and Snells Beach brigades had a relatively quiet time of it. Warkworth CFO Nick McLean said the January 27 floods had been far busier for his crew, with only a few trees and powerlines down and no flooding issues, although there had been a serious house fire in the Dome Valley on the Tuesday after the cyclone, which had destroyed the property.

Snells Beach CFO Jason Connolly also had relatively few callouts. He said people had heeded all the warnings and stayed home, which had helped lessen the storm’s impact.