Cyclone Gabrielle - Day 1.

Last Saturday and Sunday, I started to prepare us for Cyclone Gabrielle.  The media was full of the usual breathless "It's gonna kill us all" hype that they've trotted out so many times before, so I really didn't believe them very much.  Still it was a big spinning circle that looked pretty scary on Windy.com so I thought we'd better take it seriously.  I got out the emergecy kit, I charged up every powerbank, laptop, mobile phone, torch and battery in the place.  I knew the gas bottle was pretty full and we had a gas BBQ and a seperate gas ring to cook on if we needed it.  We had bore water to drink should we need it.  I thought we're pretty good to go, really.  Not expecting that much really, but I did take a "before" video just in case the worst came to worst of our backyard.

Sunday afternoon Grant, Lisa and their daughter Oliva came over to meet Beth and Theo, Oliva is going to babysit the kids in a few weeks.  Once Oliva had met the kids and we'd all had a chat, Grant said he'd bring me into work the next (Monday) morning if I wanted.  I spent the afternoon just making sure everything was tied up, put away and that nothing could blow away if at all possible.

Sunday night the wind really picked up.  Super howling gales, trees thrashing about.  Beth woke up about 3am and got into bed with us for 30 minutes, the noises freaked her out.  Monday I woke up and it was pissing rain so I messaged Grant and took him up on his offer.  We all watched the store on Windy.com at work and I have to say I started to get a bit worried.  It looked bad.  We all sort of agreed that we could go home early, so I got a lift back home with Jordan.  The wind etc was really picking up, pissing rain and it wasn't great.  The school even emailed to say "We could get our kids anytime we wanted" but I was already up there at 12pm getting them into the car.  Beth could tell something was up but didn't push it, Theo was just glad to come home and watch the switch.

We battened down the hatches, I got the emergency gear all prepped on the kitchen table and off we went to bed.  Same thing again, Beth at about 3am got into our bed scared of the wind and the noises, but went back to bed herself.  Apart from Beth waking me up, I slept like a baby.  When I woke up at 6am I was pleasently surprised to see the power was still on!  "Great", I thought, "The storm has passed and we're fine!".  I went outside and had a look around and oh boy, the storm had dumped A LOT of water around the property.  I took a video because Kent at work always loves to tease me about how much surface water we get at JTown when it rains, so I took it mostly to humour him.   But really everything seemed fine, I wasn't worried.  A few photos of how high water was in rivers were passed around the early-morning work group chat, but nothing that made me too worried.

The one thing I did do was boil the (full) kettle every 5 minutes, because the lights had done a few odd flickers and I figured that maybe the power might go out (Ha!).  And sure enough at ~7:20am or so, everything went dark.  No worries I had a full kettle, my laptop had power and I had a fully charged phone.  So I turned on Tethering on my phone and off I went.  Talked to a bunch of workmates and they'd ALL lost power.  Ok I thought this isn't just a branch over the lines up the road, it's a major feeder has gone somewhere - even people in Havelock North were dark.  I figured maybe Transpower had lost a feeder line and they'd reroute it.

I went outside to talk to Jonna our nextdoor neighbour about all the water and she said oh yes, it's bad and there's talk that the stopbank up the road might burst.  Crap!  I remembered now a photo that a workmate had shared in the morning chat (before the power went out) of how bad the stopbank was up near EIT where I walk Biscuit all the time.  It was basically at the stopbank.  It'd never really occured to me that water could/would go over that but shit, of course. (You're allowed to laugh at this stage)

Anyway after talking to Jonna I packed the car and made the kids get ready.  She and Chris assured me if they heard more (they had a friend who worked for Civil Defence) they'd let me know ASAP.  Beth knew something was up now and was quite worried, but we just told her we're being prepared.  Also please put all your vauable items, stuffed toys etc etc, upstairs.  I got Sarah up and alerted to the fact things weren't good either.  This was probably 10am I guess... Mobile phone coverage had PACKED it in with.  With no power, the UPS at the cellsites had all died, that plus I guess everyone was trying to use their mobile because no one had power.

At 10:16am I got on my phone (but Sarah didn't, odd, because she still had Spark coverage I was just "Emergency Calls Only") I got the first Civil Defense alert.  I went and told Sarah who was in the shower that we needed to go.  I got the kids to get ready and get in the car, we put the last bits in the car, told Chris and Jonna we'd got the alert.  They weren't sure what to do, they seemed hesitent to leave.  But we were out of there.  Get in, Biscuit. As we turned onto Meannee Road, it was obvious everyone was getting the f**k out there.  Traffic was heavy.  As we got to the Guppy Road lights (which were out, of course, no power)  we started to get stuck in traffic.  You could see cars up ahead not moving. As we crawled further along up the road we get another alert on my phone, this one specifically mentioning Jervoistown ending with "Gotto your nearest hill. Take animals. Please move now".  I was glad we were moving and didn't wait like Chris and Jonna!  Next we got stuck on the road because they were letting cars out of a side street that water was rushing down.  Of course it makes sense, those people were coming from up towards the stopbank, they needed to be let out sooner that us already away from the stopbank a bit.  But it was a shitting nervous wait sitting IN running flood water that was, only slowly, rising.  We tried to remain calm for the kids but it was pretty horrible.  Eventually we made it up past the Taradale shops and could turn up towards Holly's house.  When we got there, everyone was already up the hill, the road was chaos.  We managed with a bit of moving cars around to park on Holly and Adrian's property though, because there was zero parking on the street.  And we went inside.

Holy Shit! From their vantage point you could SEE flood water coming down past EIT, flooding neighbouring streets.  The rain kept coming.  My phone kept getting the same two alerts every hour for some reason, farking annoying.  It was pretty horrific.  The kids mostly had no clue, having a great time playing with Joseph and Isla.  Adrian was increasingly worried about Chris and Barbs.  He'd been around to their house early in the morning to tell them to get out - their house is surrounded by two rivers.  Then he'd left and only just managed to get out himself, but they hadn't followed straight behind him.

The rest of the day was spent just watching the flood waters receed, wondering if our house was OK etc.  Later in the day Holly drove me back down to our place - it was thankfully fine, no problems in Jervoistown at all.  I grabbed my bike and rode back up to Holly's place.

Adrian had left to try and find Chris and Barb.  We just sort of sat around - various people came by and came in, Mary came in etc.  At one point earlier in the morning Adrian invited in some random people sitting in their campervan for a cuppa.  It was super surreal.  Eventually we got the Civil Defence WOOP WOOP on my phone that said we could return home, so that's what we did.  Put everyone and the dog in the car and Sarah drove home, I hopped on my bike and went past one of the evac point to see if I could find Chris and Barb.  I met Adrian there too, and parked my bike on the HOLY LAWN which the girls at the evac zone school told me to please move.  Sorry Jesus, you Cyclone bringing jerk.

I did wonder how work, and the network, was getting on, but with no way to communicate with anyone I couldnt really find out.  Sarah's phone could get data but it was slow and limited.  Only Spark stood up it seems.  But a few messages got in and out - we let people know we were OK.  We heard that Redclyffe power substation was flooded and there was talk it would take 4 weeks to repair.  Fucking hell, no power for 4 weeks.  I got in contact with a few people from work via Sarah's limited data and found out things were ok and the big generator we have was working just fine.

Got the kids to bed, they were SO upset about how dark it was. But I wasn't going to waste torch/battery power if we had to use 'em for 4 weeks.  They couldn't sleep though.  Eventually I found Theo's star machine and put 3AA's in that and turned it on the lowest "shine a light" (star pattern in the distance) mode - putting it into the hallway.  That calmed them both down enough they could go to sleep.

WHAT A FUCKING DAY.