Flooding in Napier has caused widespread damage which has forced some businesses to shut and residents to evacuate.
By Abbey Wakefield
Still recovering from the Covid-19 lockdown, Napier restaurant owner Andrew Beck's coming to terms with having to close up shop.
"We just won the people's choice award; business is starting to go very, very well and now this really, really hurts us," Beck said.
Beck told 1 NEWS his entire restaurant was flooded within 30 minutes last night.
"We have to close shop, we have to close business, I've got about six staff, I can't pay them for now, we'll just have to see what happens."
As of 3:30am today Civil Defence had evacuated about 40-50 people.
Napier experienced more than four times its monthly average rainfall in just one day. (Source: Other)
One resident told 1 NEWS the water was just a metre away from their doorstep, so they had to make the decision to evacuate about 8pm last night.
She made the decision to evacuate "so we didn't have to do it in the middle of the night".
Resident Tari Curtis said she worried for her neighbours.
"The rain was the heaviest I have ever seen," Curtis said.
"I wasn't worried for my house, as it is set quite high off road level - I was more worried about my elderly neighbour.
"The power went out at about 7.30pm, I texted my neighbor and she had candles but about an hour later her candles had run out and she was sitting in darkness.
"I walked a few doors down to her house in thigh-deep water to take her a headlamp and some glow sticks - other than that, myself and my family were fine.
"There were some abandoned cars in the middle of our street that were collected this morning.
"A man that lives a few blocks away couldn't make it home so he parked up on the highest point on my front lawn and walked the rest of the way."
Ian McDonald, Napier’s Civil Defence, manager spoke to TVNZ1’s Breakfast. (Source: Other)
The Mayor of Napier Kirsten Wise has been working with officials this morning to assess the damage.
"The Napier Hill where we've had a number of landslides and then some of our suburbs that are quite low lying and they're the areas that we have had to predominantly do the evacuations." Wise said.
Civil Defence is also concerned about what contamination may be lurking in the water.
"We're really concerned about sewage which is mixed in with the stormwater and with the floodwaters and so people need to be really careful clearing out silt," a spokesperson said.
A Fire and Emergency spokesperson said they attended about 350 flood-related callouts since last night.
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