Epic journey amid Gabrielle’s fury

By Gerald Rillstone.

Amid post-apocalyptic scenes of flooding, slash and silt from Cyclone Gabrielle, anxious Abhay Sharma had just one thing on his mind: getting back to his wife and baby at all costs.

On a normal day it would have been an easy 10-minute drive from Hastings to Napier, but this day was far from normal, and the trip turned into six desperate hours.

Abhay lives in Napier and owns Global Auto Works Hastings, a business he took over late last year. Things were going well, but that all changed overnight when the cyclone struck.

There was a lot of wind and rain on the night the storm hit, power and communications were down, but thinking the worst was over the next morning

Abhay headed to Hastings to check on his workshop and a cousin he hadn’t heard from for three days.

“I woke up in the morning and got ready to go to work but when I looked outside there was flooding, the water was up to the sills of my car.”

Then came a knock on his door.

It was the police ordering the house to be evacuated and with a baby to worry about, Abhay waded through waste-deep water and hired a 4WD to get the family to a friend’s house.

“My son is only 15 months old, and I was worried about carrying him through the flood water,” he says.

“Luckily the house didn’t get flooded but all around it there was water.”

With his family safe, Abhay headed down the Napier to Clive Road to Hastings to check on the workshop and track down his cousin.

“Everything looked fine, life was normal, I checked the workshop it was fine, apart from one customer car which got flooded in the bottom corner of the carpark where it holds water,” he says. He found his cousin and was heading home to Napier when he discovered the main road through Clive had been closed. Panic set in.

“Goosebumps”

“There was more flooding, and they had closed the road so I was stuck there; my baby and wife were back in Napier, they would start panicking because there were no phones working, nothing was working in Napier and it had already been three hours.”

With a friend, who also needed to get back to Napier, Abhay started driving around looking for a way home and ended up parking his car in Clive with the intention of walking across the Clive Bridge - a 15-kilometre hike to Napier.

“I thought it would be easy enough, but there were cops everywhere and we were going to do a runner over the bridge, but they said, ‘Don’t dare cross the bridge’, I felt like someone was going to shoot me.”

“One cop did tell us there was one way in and out of Napier, but it was only for emergency services and not for the public,” he says. But Abhay wasn’t about to give up - he had to get home.

If he couldn’t get there by road, he thought there must be a path over the inland hills, and he even planned to drive to Palmerston North and fly to Napier.

“I went to Fernhill and Swamp Road and that’s when I got goosebumps, I couldn’t see the road - it was all water.

“I reversed back and went through Taradale and there was a very nice lady who said the road was also closed to cars, so I parked there we started walking towards Napier and a cop car came by and asked if I was all right and I said no, I just wanted to get home to Napier,” he says. Luck was finally on his side. The police gave him a ride on a route open for emergency vehicles only.

“It was six to seven hours in the rain, and I wasn’t the only one and at the back of my mind the whole time was ‘We have to look after our families’.

Recovery mode

“After a few days I went into recovery mode. There’s no water so we have to sort out water, and I have an electric stove and no electricity, so I went out to get gas bottles,” Abhay says. With home sorted, Abhay turned his mind to the community and went about helping others. In the weeks following the cyclone, MTA member Abhay and his mates have been putting together whatever food they can to feed those in need in the Hastings community.

“After seeing what has happened around the area, my mate and I decided to go out and help in the community. He owns a restaurant, and we chipped in to cook food and took it everywhere we could because people didn’t have food and they were afraid to come to town.

“For me it is all about the people in the community; after what I saw and what happened out there, I had to do something to help out,” he says. With the clean-up and recovery underway, the experience has left its mark, Abhay says; when it rains there is the fear of being flooded again.

“It was a scary time, four days without power and communications, never heard of in New Zealand,” he says.

But in the meantime, his family’s safe and the community’s bouncing back.