A year on From Gabrielle: are we any further on?

Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, April 1st, 2024 - 26 comments
Categories: climate change, disaster, nature - Tags: , , , ,

Cross posted from CANA. Originally published at Coal Action Network Aotearoa 13/2/24. Post by Cindy Baxter.

Cindy Baxter is a long time climate campaigner and communications consultant, working on environmental issues for over 30 years. 

One year ago today, on the afternoon of February 13 2023, the rain was getting more intense, the wind was getting up. I had batteries charged, water containers full – I was as ready as I could be for what I knew would be possibly the biggest storm to hit Aotearoa since Cyclone Bola in the 80’s.

Piha’s Marawhara stream the morning after Gabrielle. It went right through the campground, narrowly missing a house.


Gabrielle lived up to her forecasts. She slammed into our little west coast communities of Piha, Karekare, Bethells and Muriwai later in the afternoon of 13 February 2023 and changed our lives forever, for some more than others.  She went on to slam into Hawkes Bay, the Bay of Plenty and Tairāwhiti with renewed force and the government declared a national emergency.

Over the next 12 hours my Piha back yard rain gauge recorded upwards of 450 mm of rain.  I wrote about it here.  People lost their houses. My street had no power for the next 11 days. And while tragically, two volunteer firefighters at Muriwai lost their lives, somehow miraculously everyone else in these small communities survived, albeit with some very, very close calls.

Fast forward to today and where are we? Most of the people in the yellow or red stickered households haven’t got a final decision from the council:  they’re still in limbo.  One couple has lived in eight different rentals over the course of the last year.

Some of my close friends have moved out, left the community entirely. I miss them.

The traffic lights at the top of the hill on the one-way system past the slumped road near the (now closed) Elevation restaurant now cause half hour waits on sunny summer days as Aucklanders head home from the beach. Scenic Drive to Titirangi is still closed after an enormous slip in the Anniversary Weekend rain.

A few forest walking tracks have been restored, but the rest of them remain inaccessible. 

But the bigger questions on the longer term issues of resilience, adaptation and climate action have yet to be resolved: in many cases they’re going backwards.

Auckland Council’s still approving resource consents on floodplains. Indeed everybody is, it seems: the media’s full of stories about people across Hawkes Bay  “determined to rebuild”.  But why would you even want that?  Who would want to rebuild a house knowing it could be swept away in another ginormous flood? 

But then again who has a choice? Insurance companies pay out more for a rebuild than for a straight payout. But will they insure those houses on floodplains again?  That’s also super unclear right now.  

There’s also calls for a National Policy Statement on Natural Hazards to get councils to limit consents on land vulnerable to floods, to give that national guidance. An article in Newsroom today sets out the difficulties of getting prepared for the future. 

Because those huge floods will come again. Maybe not in the same place: we might not get the specific situation where that huge blocking high to the east, that Weatherwatch described as a “brick wall” sent Gabrielle barrelling down the country, but we know we’ll get more rainfall in a warming world.

Meanwhile the petro-state-hosted COP28 in Dubai last year blocked a phase-out of fossil fuels, something even the conservative International Energy Agency is backing.

And after Labour’s climate policy bonfire ahead of the elections, and the new government’s even bigger climate policy bonfire since the election (amid promises of just getting started, wait until we get the fast-track to Shane Jones’s promised coal mining resurgence), the future in terms of climate action here in Aotearoa is bleak.

The Ministry for the Environment has been working on an adaptation plan, and spent the last year consulting widely on it, but nobody’s quite sure what the new Climate Change minister Simon Watts wants to do. Oh, except keep agriculture from paying for its emissions. And NOT fix the ETS to separate out forests so that we keep (ridiculously and counter-productively) planting our way to net zero and not cutting actual emissions.

I mean you’d think our wider business community would want some certainty and guidance from government around future extreme weather (flooding, drought, storm) events, sea level rise, and how to deal with an insurance industry that’s either going to withdraw its insurance altogether, or price it out of range.

Because as we saw with Gabrielle, climate change has an absolutely massive impact on the economy: it sent fruit and vegetable prices through the roof as a major “food basket” region was sent under 1.5m of silt. There were no comms, no transport routes, no workers, nothing. 

A June 2023 government announcement set out some of the post-cyclone package with eye-watering sums being spent: $1 billion, $6 billion, $74 million, plus loan and finance packages.

Just yesterday Christopher Luxon was on the ground with Emergency Minister Mark Mitchell  announcing another (relatively tiny) tranche of cash ($63 million) for Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti clean-up (they didn’t mention climate change though). This isn’t going to stop any time soon. 

While the North Island farmers are still trying to clear slash and silt from their farms, others are facing ongoing droughts and fires under this year’s super-strength El Niño, for which they will no doubt be asking for handouts from the government.

Climate change is relentless: it’s not going away, without action it’s only going to get worse, and the bills will continue to mount.  

Back home in Piha we have the beginnings of a resilience plan that mostly focuses on where to go on the night if there’s a big event. Longer-term thinking about how we’d cope if the big slips on the hill really did cut us off for a while simply hasn’t taken place. 

Tonight, the community gathers locally to remember that terrible night a year ago.  There will be karakia, kai and kindness, tears and love. That’s how our community rolls. 

But the bigger thinking has barely begun.

26 comments on “A year on From Gabrielle: are we any further on? ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Belladonna 1
    1 April 2024 at 2:32 pm

    The biggest problem in terms of resilience – is that no one wants to do it if they are disadvantaged.
    Big picture thinking would have been that Piha, etc. wasn't an environmentally sustainable location for homes.
    And that, therefore – the sustainable thing to do would be to relocate the communities (probably only around 1,000 homes), close the road (i.e. plant over it), and leave it as walking-track only accessible.

    By, 'relocate', I mean build a new subdivision off SH16 – on currently rural land. Houses that can be relocated are. Those that aren't, get whatever rebuild they have in their insurance contract (insurers are required to pay out on this). Those who don't want to live there, are perfectly free to sell up (on the open market), and move on. Yep, some people will take a hit on their home value (since they no longer have the highly-prized sea view) – but it's surely better to have a safe home – and they're in it for the long term.

    But, none of the community living there want this as a solution…. They want a magic wand waved, and be back to BAU. And, if they do have to leave, they want their new home to have the same 'Piha' magic (i.e. beach views, hills, bush, small community); and are unwilling to accept that any such location is going to have the same issues.

    I don't have direct knowledge of the Hawkes Bay – but I suspect it's much the same scenario – no one wants the relocation to be 'them'.

  2. georgecom 2
    1 April 2024 at 3:26 pm

    any further along? no and perhaps even taking a step or 2 backward with National/ACT?Winston First govt. A year ago agriculture was going to have costs applied to CHGs, how it's been kicked down the road at least 5 years. So rather than making a start on reducing agriculture CHGs under financial incentives people will just continue doing nothing or making their own reductions based on their own commonsense. Climate change funds have been reallocated to tax cuts, a balanced approach to transport has been tipped toward simple simeons fixation with roads. so no, no further ahead, probably gone backward under this present government.

  3. Ad 3
    1 April 2024 at 4:53 pm

    Several roads in Titirangi still down to one lane where half of the road has just fallen away. OMG AT.

    Also multiple Titirangi houses have just accepted the buyout cheque and are now on their way elsewhere.

    The tough coincidence for many in flood-affected Auckland is that there is now a glut of houses on the market – caused less by Gabrielle and more by mortgage rate rollovers which are far higher than they were. Few are making money from house sales, when they need a good sale to start again.

    The Waitakere Ranges Heritage legislation certainly slowed and stalled development of the forested coasts, but Gabrielle is reversing the retreat.

    How viable is Piha, Little Huia, Muriwai, Bethells, and even lowland Ranui?

    At what point do the insurance companies make that decision for us? It must be close.

    • Belladonna 3.1
      1 April 2024 at 5:04 pm

      I have been expecting the insurance companies to become much harder nosed about insurance premiums in a wide range of areas of NZ – effectively making houses in high-risk areas uninsurable (or at least the premiums unaffordable for most people). But it doesn't seem to have eventuated so far. Insurance companies appear to be raising premiums across the board – averaging out the risk.

      Surely once one decides to assign cost-to-risk appropriately – they'll make a fortune from all of the low-risk properties switching to them for the lower premiums….

      As I said above, I don't feel that any of the Auckland West Coast coastal villages are viable in the current climate-change environment. The problem is that no one wants to bite the bullet and enact a solution.

      • weka 3.1.1
        1 April 2024 at 5:19 pm

        this is true. But also true is that we can shift inland and there will still be huge resiliency problems. We appear to just be really bad at assessing future risks. We've know about climate change for a long time and many houses have been built in stupid places in that time. We're still doing it.

      • Ad 3.1.2
        1 April 2024 at 5:24 pm

        The last time we saw a whole suburb red-stickered was when Christchurch'ss Brooklands, Avonside, New Brighton and Bexley were pretty written off.

        Piha is over 1,000 residents with average house value about $1.2million.

        It wouldn't be cheap or poltically easy.

        • Belladonna 3.1.2.1
          1 April 2024 at 5:48 pm

          Not proposing to buy out the houses at the current valuation. But to relocate them to a new suburb. You get the same land area size you currently have.
          Yes. People will on paper lose value (no longer will they have the sea view adding an extra 200K to the price tag). But they will have a place to live.

          Relocatable houses can be shifted (insurance cost); un-relocatable houses can be replaced (whatever agreement you have in your insurance).
          Government comes to the party for uninsured with un-relocatable houses – and they get a minimum size/spec state house on their plot. They own the land, the government owns the house.

          Banks required to retain the current mortgage limits for those houses, until they are sold (so you could still have a $1 million mortgage on a 700K house – without the bank forcing you into foreclosure)

          I'd say that Piha might have around 400 or so actual houses. And, the government could acquire farmland for considerably less than the Piha land value – just off SH16. Prioritize in the utilities – and they could be shifting houses by the end of the year.

          So, not cheap. But do-able.

          The biggest issues (apart from the unhappiness of the residents) would be legislating to ensure that banks had to retain current mortgage limits and that insurance companies were required to pay out on undamaged houses on red-stickered land.

          The problem is that I'm willing to bet not a single Piha resident would accept this solution – unless forced to do so. Hence the political risk associated – although I doubt there are too many right-wing voters in Piha.

          The last government shied away from this issue. And, I don't expect better things from this one. It's always easier to pass the political hot potato on….

          And, that's the biggest problem with any option that you can come up with. The people who are most affected, aren't willing to buy into the change. NIMBY with a vengeance.

          Setting this up as a standard relocation model – would save a lot of grief, for the next time this happens. And there are plenty of candidates….

          • Ad 3.1.2.1.1
            1 April 2024 at 7:57 pm

            In 2018 there were 400 occupied dwellings and a further 300 unoccupied. So in reality Piha's about 1,000 houses now.

            What you are looking at doing is forming a new version of CERA. CERA crossed with Kainga Ora. An entity with its own powers to value properties and write cheques and build new suburbs with water and roads and libraries and police stations, and overrule the Council.

            Now, under what form of government would that legislation pass?

            If you want to see what the last government did with masterplanning whole new communities, you can check out Mt Albert, Mangere, Pt England or Northcote. And for that effort, Kainga Ora are in a world of financial pain that makes the Kiwirail bailout look like pocket money.

            Every community is different. But Piha is chocka with multimillionaires with great lawyers. Especially environmental and property lawyers. They are the kind of activists who will protest the felling of a Pohutukawa branch rather than let emergency services in. And see you in the High Court about it.

            Piha sure ain't Westport. And even Westport just preferred more stop-banks.

            • Belladonna 3.1.2.1.1.1
              1 April 2024 at 10:35 pm

              Well, those multi-millionaires better be prepared with deep pockets for the next disaster. Because I don't think that either the government or the Council are going to bail them out twice.

            • Belladonna 3.1.2.1.1.2
              1 April 2024 at 11:18 pm

              It's clear that you find there are lots of potential problems with my proffered solution.

              Do you have an alternative?

              Or do we just sit here paralysed by the fear of multi-millionaires with lawyers – and a strong case of NIMBY syndrome.

              Because – no matter if we switched to climate-friendly policies today (and yes, I do see that sounder of pigs flying past) – the reality is that the ongoing impacts on our country and climate will be escalating for decades to come.

              If there are no plans, then we just ricochet from crisis to crisis.

              • Ad …
                2 April 2024 at 12:33 pm

                Honestly for a bunch of rich entitled white grumpies in Piha, I would do a couple of slightly harsh things without going PWA on their asses.

                1. Don't protest when insurers walk away from Piha. And don't underwrite them. Or bail them out when re-stickered. And of course if you're not insured you get no EQC. Fully on your own.

                2. Don't provide Piha with a centralised wastewater plant.

                3. Don't do anything except absolute minimum of road maintenance, and no footpaths. Let it degrade.

                4. A minor District Plan change to widen the area affected by natural hazards: cliff falls, unstable geotech, tsunami surge expansion, floodplain expansion, biosecurity and bioiversity footprint expansion, no budget for stop-banks, etc

                Essentially a great big sign at the start of Piha saying: Buy or Rent Here At Your Own Risk

                • cindy Baxter …
                  4 April 2024 at 1:58 pm

                  Sheesh, you're certainly one for a gross generalisation aren't you!
                  The Piha community – the one that actually lives here (not the bach owners) is not what you think it is.
                  If I look at my own street, my neighbours include a couple of builders, a delivery driver, a plumber, unemployed, a union worker, a self-employed caterer, a single mum who cleans locally… a womens refugee worker, a film industry art dept worker…
                  Interspersed are some rich white grumpies but they're certainly not representative of the community. Maybe check your generalisations before writing off an entire community?

          • Cindy Baxter 3.1.2.1.2
            2 April 2024 at 9:07 pm

            haha you're right about most people here not wanting to move! I don't think objecting to being moved from a beautiful black sand beach surrounded by bush to a housing development off SH16 could be labelled "Nimby" – that's a bit harsh! The precedent would be more than any council could bear, financially, anyway.

            I couldn't see the council buying out the entire community, nor moving us. I can see that happening in parts of the Hawkes Bay community – or Esk Valley, where the floods took out the whole valley. That didn't happen here. The vast majority of homes here are fine, including mine. Karekare, though, with the incredibly steep cutting or Lone Kauri Road where there were massive slips all down both roads, is possibly a different story. I'm all for resilience, and getting rooftop solar is my next move: we mostly all have our own water supplies already.

            The voting booth here usually registers National or Green, with a bit of Labour.. (in a normal year). Plenty of right wingers in town.

            • Belladonna 3.1.2.1.2.1
              3 April 2024 at 12:38 pm

              So what's your solution for the Auckland West Coast coastal communities?

              Because I absolutely guarantee that Auckland ratepayers aren't going to bail them out a second time. Nor do I see why taxpayers should, if sensible managed retreat options aren't followed.

              I note that the NIMBYism is alive and well — not my community – but pick on Karekare or Lone Kauri Rd.

              This isn't about water supply, or solar panels. It's about a long and vulnerable single road access. About houses perched on hillsides – which have been demonstrated to be unstable. And (also relevant) about houses in a narrow shelf between the beach and the hills (sea level rise).

              If the West Coast communities are happy to take all of those risks, in order to go on living on their 'beautiful black sand beach' – then have at it. Risk is on your heads. No government, or local government bail out required if/when it all goes to custard. Good luck with getting insurance.

              And, a prime example of why none of the managed retreat options work. The people affected simply don't want to shift….

              • weka …
                3 April 2024 at 1:07 pm

                didn't Cindy already differentiate between the parts of that area that are relatively stable and those that aren't?

                • Belladonna …
                  4 April 2024 at 2:44 pm

                  Road in/out (there is only one) is subject to landslips. All properties are affected by this risk.

                  Any claims that 'some' properties are unaffected by risk is highly suspect. The properties which aren't perched on hillsides are at sea-level (pick your climate-change impact)

                  Cindy didn't claim anything other than her property (and others) haven't been hit by this disaster. Nothing about ongoing risk assessment.

        • Sanctuary 3.1.2.2
          2 April 2024 at 12:42 pm

          Remind me not to show the place we are looking at in Piha….

          • Belladonna 3.1.2.2.1
            2 April 2024 at 5:45 pm

            I don't have a problem with you buying – just not prepared to fund your escape from a bad bargain.

          • Ad 3.1.2.2.2
            2 April 2024 at 10:30 pm

            Don't buy coastal in west Auckland either clifftop or valley or close to the beach. Either coast the geotech is shit.

            Don't buy coastal in Northland because actually the Brynderwyns are unwinding into Weetbix and not even the new SH1 to Warkworth holds up in a good flood. And it is poverty-choked.

            Don't buy coastal in Tauranga firstly because a good White Island earthquake will liquiefy everything around the Mount, and tsunamis and sea level rise gets the first 10 metres of everything else … and it's a hole.

            Don't buy costal in Taupo due to massive and high seismic risk.

            Don't buy coastal in Hawke's Bay, because you will have seen the Napier Earthquake return cycle, Hikurangi Subduction, and the entire Gabrielle floodplain footprint, plus sea level rise.

            Of the whole of the North Island my lowest risk bet would be Taranaki.

            Then the South Island from Christchurch all the way north is a seismic hair trigger.

            And the South Island west coast from Jackson Bay to Nelson is on another hair trigger.

            This is the latest view from our insurers re climate change risk:

            https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/511165/nz-insurance-council-conference-mulls-risks-of-climate-change

            • Hunter Thompson II 3.1.2.2.2.1
              3 April 2024 at 8:47 am

              The other day, Stats NZ provided this report on erosion-prone land across the country: https://stats.govt.nz/news/more-than-half-of-highly-erodible-land-located-in-the-north-island-in-2022/#:~:text=Island%20in%202022-,More%20than%20half%20of%20highly%20erodible%20land,the%20North%20Isl

              A map of landslide risk zones shows Auckland as a "hot spot".

              It's definitely time for some big-picture planning on how we build houses and where we build them.

              • Belladonna …
                3 April 2024 at 12:43 pm

                We see this on the North Shore, every time there's a storm, bits of the heavily-developed clifftop properties drop away onto the beach.

                In the 'old days' of small houses and bachs – there was a decent set back from the cliff-edge to the house. Now, with infill housing, and mega-mansions complete with infinity pools and landscaping, the developed area is right up to the cliff edge (and sometimes cantilevered over it).

                Disaster waiting to happen.

                A sensible risk mitigation strategy would be to require removal of all decks and other infrastructure to a reasonable set back from the cliff; and ban any house development activity which extends the footprint towards the cliff edge.

                Try that, and watch the millionaires scream, lawyer-up and take the Council to the Environment Court.

                The only way to cut the Gordian knot is through legislation. And I strongly doubt that any government has the guts to do it…..

            • KJT 3.1.2.2.2.2
              4 April 2024 at 3:20 pm

              Don't buy land in NZ……………………..

              Pick a nice stable bit of desert in central Australia.

      • weka 3.1.3
        2 April 2024 at 12:40 pm

        what specifically is it about Piha that makes it high risk?

  4. gsays 4
    1 April 2024 at 6:29 pm

    Well said, it is an option albeit, as you point out, that no one will favour.

    I figure capitalism got us into "This mess we're in". It's not till the insurance/banksters and their shareholders are ready will change come from them.

    Because it's Easter, P.J. Harvey and Thom Yorke.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BTrGowDPjBk&pp=ygUndGhpcyBtZXNzIHdlJ3JlIGluIHBqIGhhcnZleSB0aG9tIHlvcmtl

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