Latest news with #JimPapps
RNZ News
17-07-2025
- Climate
- RNZ News
Hawke's Bay shares cyclone silt, slash lessons with flood-hit Tasman
Mud and silt at Jim Papps home in Dovedale. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ The head of the $228 million silt removal programme after Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawke's Bay is drawing "eerie" similarities with Nelson Tasman region, as the flood-hit areas look ahead to their own recovery. Communities across the top of the South Island were facing millions of dollars worth of damage to roading infrastructure, farmland and properties, following the two recent floods that struck the area within a two week period, from late June. Riverside properties in Tasman were grappling with woody debris, silt and waste strewn across their properties. Cyclone Gabrielle smashed Aotearoa in February 2023 with a force of heavy rain which caused flooding damaging infrastructure, properties and land on the North Island's East Coast. Thick silt and upended tractors lie at the front of Pheasant Farm, Esk Valley, in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo: RNZ / Jemima Huston Twelve people died during the natural disaster. Large amounts of silt, forestry slash and waste were swept across the whenua, prompting councils across Hawke's Bay to set up an immediate regional taskforce to deal with the material. Shane Fell says the floodwater left more than 500 tonnes of silt on the property. Photo: Supplied Taskforce lead Darren de Klerk said watching the news, there were similar scenes in Tasman as there were in Hawke's Bay and Tairāwhiti following the cyclone. "It's quite an eerie similarity, I think when you look at some of the woody debris and some of the silt and mixed product that we had to deal with," he said. "Obviously, productive land is another similarity in the fact that a lot of the highly productive horticulture and viticulture land has been infected." De Klerk said after an emergency, the early stages of recovery were usually shrouded in uncertainty. "In the early days, anyone dealing with this will find it quite overwhelming," he said. "Firstly, it's just understanding the level of involvement that either Civil Defence or the council has in this recovery." De Klerk said it broke Hawke's Bay up into six zones, triaged properties by severity, and then mapped out sorting and disposal sites, in efforts to "chomp the elephant" one bit at a time. Since its beginning, the team moved more than 2.5 million cubic metres of silt across more than 1100 properties, returning around 7000 hectares of land to productivity. It cleared one million cubic metres of woody debris across the coastline and rivers, and sorted through 12,500 broken orchard and vineyard posts. He said in Hawke's Bay, councils had to "take a leap" to support their communities, before the first round of government funding was announced several months after the event, in May 2023. "Essentially, you don't have a rule book," he said. "From a community point of view, I can guarantee you the people behind the scenes are working as absolutely as hard as they possibly can to find solutions." Photo: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone He said it was working with Tasman officials to share insights and avoid "re-inventing the wheel". "One of the biggest probably learning is just how you manage your contractor army," de Klerk said. "Having a standby list of contractors available, so you're not having to work through the procurement and contracting of suppliers in the heat of the recovery phase. "My thoughts are with them and they'll be trying their absolute best." De Klerk said the work must be methodical, and open communication with locals was vital. He was now working for the Hastings District Council on its ongoing water and roading infrastructure cyclone recovery. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
15-07-2025
- Climate
- RNZ News
Clean up continues for Tasman District in wake of widespread flood damage
Jim Papps standing in front of one of his tractors following bad weather in Tasman District. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ Throughout the Tasman District, the clean up continues after two floods caused widespread damage to homes, businesses, farms and orchards. For Jim Papps, that's meant scraping mud off the driveway of his Dovedale home and out of his sheds, for the second time in as many weeks. Papps and his wife Maureen built their home near the Dove River in 1954 and said they've never seen anything like what happened in the last three weeks. They've experienced flooding before, but this was on a different scale. "[It's] the biggest flood that we've ever seen, we've had some big floods that have come over the paddock here a few times but this one was the biggest one. Well, it was two floods." Papps' collection of 14 old tractors are surrounded by silt and sludge. His workshop has a layer of mud through it and there is wood and other debris still strewn across the yard. One of Jim Papps tractors stuck in the mud at his Dovedale home following the floods. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ The couple have spent the last few days scraping mud and silt off their property, retrieving items that floated downstream and clearing up debris. During the first flood, just over three weeks ago, Papps said he woke in the early hours of the morning and went to check on the river level. "I got up and shone a spotlight out the toilet window and I couldn't believe what I was seeing, the water was flowing through the yard... and I knew darn well then that it would have been going in our carport down the bottom." He then went to check on his neighbour, Paul Harper, who for the last 20 years or so had lived in a house bus between the couple's home and the river. "[Harper] was standing on the porch at the back of his house bus and he was panicking because he couldn't get out, the water was that swift and deep between the shed and his house bus," Papps said. Papps said the volume of water rushing through the property made quite a lot of noise. Jim Papps and his neighbour Paul Harper on their property next to the Dove River, in Dovedale. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ "I shouted out to him and said, 'I'll get the tractor and come round and bring you out on that', which I got in the bucket of the loader and I brought him out." Harper said when he awoke and opened the back door of his house truck, he wondered if he was going to get swept away. "I looked at that water and I thought, there is no way I can step into force of it was just absolutely frightening. "If it wasn't for the neighbours and for the family here, I reckon I could have bloody died." Papps and Harper moved the truck away from the river the following week when further heavy rain was forecast and Harper then missed the second flood last Friday, as he'd left in the morning to get some milk and by the time he came back, the roads were closed. The flood also washed out the approach to the nearby Cowin Bridge, and has left a huge lagoon in part of the nearby Dove River that was once a paddock. Mud and silt at Jim Papps home in Dovedale. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ On both occasions, Harper said was fortunate not to get water inside the truck, with it flowing only an inch or so below the floor. But his tool shed and wood store had been completely washed away and since Friday, he'd been cleaning up, non-stop. He was feeling, tired, burnt out and frightened. "Every time it rains, my cat disappears, I'm wide awake, and it's like, oh no, not again and it could only be just a few spits." Harper already had plans to move to Oamaru next month, but said the floods had pushed that out as he needed to dig his truck out and get it going again. "I won't park beside a river ever again, bloody way." Debris by the side of the Dove River in Dovedale. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ A helicopter landed in the paddock beside the couple's home on Tuesday, with Nelson Tasman Civil Defence checking in on their welfare. Civil Defence visited about 300 properties in Tasman on Monday as they continued to survey flood damage. Teams on Tuesday were focused on Graham Valley, Rocky River, Mārahau, Thorpe, Golden Downs, Tapawera, and Ngātīmoti. The state of emergency in Nelson Tasman will be lifted on Thursday, as the battered area moves into a one-month transition period. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
