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Auckland floods: Affected homeowners still in limbo as assessments finally get underway
Mark Griffin’s family has been torn apart after the Auckland Anniversary floods destroyed their home in Ranui.
It has been six months since the family last lived together under one roof. “My wife and one of my daughters is living in a caravan on the front driveway,” Griffin said.
Another daughter was living at a friend’s place, while his son was staying with the grandparents.
Griffin said he had a bed inside the “shell of the house”, and living in a caravan was challenging. “If it’s cold, we just have to use more blankets.”
His wife had been suffering from a cold for three weeks. “At the moment we’re just stuck in limbo, living off gas cookers and microwave meals and things like that.”
In June, Auckland Council asked affected homeowners to fill out a flooding and landslide registration form. Griffin said he filled out the form hoping his property would qualify for risk category three – a voluntary buyout.
On 14 August, council confirmed it had started full site assessments and needed to get through 5000 individual property assessments. But Griffin was yet to hear anything.
“It’s extremely frustrating. We’ve had the insurance payout to do a reinstatement, but we can’t do anything with that until we find out.”
He said he was reluctant to rebuild. “We’re in limbo at the moment. We need to know when, so we can move on with our lives, basically.”
Auckland Council group recovery manager Mat Tucker said although the assessments had started, it was difficult to confirm when the process would be completed.
“We are almost having to go home by home to make those decisions.
“If you went along some of the streets in Auckland which flooded, I’m thinking of particular locations in Māngere for example, during the event the street would be flooded, you would be driving through water and all the gardens of the homes would be flooded.
“Afterwards, when you go and look at those homes to assess which categories they may be in, it’s completely dependent upon the specifics of each of the homes in that street.”
Photo: Supplied / Andrew McDowall
Tucker said while it looked like the impact of the flooding was the same on each, that was not the case.
“When you get inside those homes and begin to look at the floor levels one by one, the difference of when and how the homes were built and what the position of their floor levels in relation to the flood makes an enormous difference to their categorisation.”
From next week, the council will be inspecting 250 properties for geotechnical issues. But a shortage of qualified professionals to complete the assessments was adding to the uncertainty around time frames.
“Of course, there’s an added complexity in terms of resources or an added challenge that this isn’t just an Auckland problem.
“It isn’t just Aucklanders that are trying to find qualified people, both in flooding and geotech, to go and do these site visits and then analyse the information that we find.
“We’re already having to use engineering resource from Australia to do some of our desktop analysis. Certainly the process is not measured in weeks, it’s measured in months.”
Advocacy group West Auckland Is Flooding chairperson Lyall Carter said while the affected homeowners understood council’s restraints, they were frustrated because the community had been warning of the failing infrastructure for years.
“We understand why the process, you know, in a broad sense, is taking the time that it’s taken, but that doesn’t alleviate the huge pressure that people are under. People are fed-up that that they have been asking for years for streams and culverts to be cleaned.”
Tucker said the recovery process in Hawke’s Bay and Tai Rāwhiti could give Auckland residents a vague idea of what to expect moving forward. But Carter said whether that would be of comfort to Aucklanders was yet to be seen.
“There’s a real sense of desperation and of anger that this project hasn’t hasn’t gone as fast as they have needed it to go.”
He said he understood there were logistical delays.
“But on the other side of the coin is a community of people who have been displaced from their homes and from their communities and are living basically as refugees in their own city.”
VIA RNZ
The chief executive of the Parliamentary Service is confident there will be enough room to accommodate the increased number of MPs and their staff coming into Parliament.
On current numbers, up to 131 MPs could be sitting in the Chamber following the election, brought on by a record overhang result.
Clerk of the House of Representatives Dr David Wilson told the Spinoff that currently the debating chamber had enough chairs to seat 124 MPs – including the Speaker of the House – and work was being done to accommodate more by altering the seating arrangement.
In a statement, Parliamentary Service chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said planning for a larger Parliament had been going for “some time”.
“Now that the election results have confirmed an increase to the number of members we are looking at several options.
“We are confident we will be able to accommodate all members within the Chamber.”
VNP / Phil Smith
Gonzalez-Montero said office accommodation for members and their staff would be “stretched” for a short time, but the new Members’ Building was only a few months away from “practical completion”.
That building – located behind Parliament – was due to be ready to occupy in April next year and had capacity to accommodate around 30 backbench MPs.
“All members should be in fit-for-purpose accommodation from that point,” Gonzalez-Montero said.
Following the 2023 election, 123 MPs sat in the Chamber – a record number at the time. That decreased to 122 following the resignation of National MP Judith Collins.
Collins held the seat of Papakura and stepped down in May and Parliament voted against holding a by-election because it was too close to the election.
The election result also meant high-ranking National Party MPs like Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith, Nicola Willis and Gerry Brownlee – Speaker of the House and an MP for 30 years – would likely not make it back into Parliament.
Only resigning or retiring MPs were permitted to give a valedictory speech meaning none of them would get the chance to give a valedictory statement.
Asked if their would be special allowances for valedictories, Wilson said in a statement that normally only MPs were allowed to speak in the House but the House could suspend its own rules or temporarily alter them.
“It could do so to allow former members to address the House.”
Wilson said no such arrangements could be made until the next Parliament opened and members sworn in.
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