Tuesday 27 July 2021
Sammie and Michael Parkes’ Tuamarina farm under water during this month’s flooding. Photo: Keelan Walker. Insert: Michael and Sammie.
Flooding wreaks havoc Peering through the windscreen as her car wipers struggled to cope with the deluge, Sammie Parkes was desperately trying to get back to her family’s farm. It was a Saturday afternoon and the road home to Tuamarina had
been closed as one of the largest storm systems in decades bore down on Marlborough. Flooding, slips and fallen trees were causing chaos on roads across the region and the main routes in and out of Blenheim on
SH1 were closed as river levels rose rapidly. Beneath the Wairau Bridge, on the route Sammi would usually take going back to the farm, a torrent of muddied waters churned just below the surface of the road.
The road was closed, effectively trapping 60 motorists who were stuck between the closed bridge and a slip outside Picton. Determined to get home, Sammi turned her car around and tried another route, not yet closed to
traffic. “I thought ‘this looks bad’, especially as we were due much more rain,” she says. As Sammi battled to get home, continued on page 2