An estimated 30 wh\u0101nau from the Uawa, or Tolaga Bay area have spent the night away from home, staying with relatives on higher ground as Cyclone Hale set floodwaters lapping at their doors.<\/p>\n
The Hikuwai River reached 13.4 metres about 3am on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
Tair\u0101whiti Civil Defence Emergency Management declared a state of local emergency at 10pm on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
But Uawa Civil Defence group member Shanan Gray said the rain had eased in the Tolaga Bay area this morning, after a night of being battered by severe weather.<\/p>\n
A 1m dropout at Mata Road, Tokomaru Bay, at the 17.5km mark. <\/span>Photo:\u00a0Gisborne District Council<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Hikuwai River had receded to 12.8 metres, coming down from its highest level of 13.4m peak, he said.<\/p>\n It is unclear when the evacuated families will be able to return to their homes.<\/p>\n Gray said the swollen waterways had caused surface flooding across roads and right up to people’s sections.<\/p>\n About 30 households in the Tolaga Bay area left their homes for the night, heading to higher ground, he said.<\/p>\n “Some wh\u0101nau have chosen to evacuate, so that just shows that some people know that the water can definitely go into their houses which we are well aware that some houses have been affected by this.”<\/p>\n One motorist has had to be rescued overnight, he said.<\/p>\n “This person didn’t get the memo that the roads were closed and we only had to pull one person out of the Rototahi Road and they are safe and they chose just to stay put, just out by Rototahi because their car was a little bit damaged from the water.”<\/p>\n Gray said he was proud of his community for having survived the weather.<\/p>\n “Farmland residents were taking precautionary measures. They were ringing us quite frequently just about giving us an update on what was happening around their section and lucky they were up high.<\/p>\n “At the moment it’s just a really proud moment for our community. They were well planned [with their response].”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n SOURCE -RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An estimated 30 wh\u0101nau from the Uawa, or Tolaga Bay area have spent the night away from home, staying with relatives on higher ground as Cyclone Hale set floodwaters lapping at their doors. The Hikuwai River reached 13.4 metres about 3am on Wednesday morning. Tair\u0101whiti Civil Defence Emergency Management declared a state of local emergency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2159,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions\/2159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}