Time of help, hard work and caution after Southland floods

Kavinda Herath/Stuff

Southland residents were out and about helping one another on Saturday.

Owen Scott’s helping out. As you do.

It’s happening all over Southland; in his case at a waterlogged Wallacetown on Saturday, where his own block doesn’t need him – it’s empty – but he’s busy atop a tractor helping a cobber do what they can for sheep, cattle – and there’s another neighbour’s hens out there too. Hopefully.

“It’s just heartbreaking,” he said, “but that’s Mother Nature.’’

He gestures to the water all around him.

“When it gets over the banks it’s got nowhere to go. It just gets landlocked. Got to find its way through the creek system to get out. It’s going to take days and days and days for it to disappear.’’

And when it does, that’s when people would find out what damage the water had been concealing, he said.

Not far away, he knows a guy who has half a dozen posts down, and has to get his hotwire system back up again.

“I’ve got post-drivers at home, so could thump ‘em in. But we’ve got to wait for the water to go down.’’

It’s been a busy day, but also a day of waiting. And then he laughs ruefully. Because he knows there’s nothing here that isn’t happening all over the place.

“Every river in Southland, they’ve all got it this time.’’

Kavinda Herath/Stuff

Wallacetown farmland is awash with water.

Near the tractor, Zara Crosbie, aged nine, is happy to send out a thank you for help she received from someone she knows only as Paul, a “neighbourish’’ guy from the Renfrew St end of things, who got a 25kg bag of feed to Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin – her four pet lambs.

The water was just a bit too high for her family’s car - but he saw them right. In his golf cart.

Turns out that cart has done good service lately, getting feed to pet ducks, lambs, horses and sheep.

Emergency Management Southland duty controller Simon Mapp called the floodwaters an event that “certainly does show the mettle of people - they stump up and they do what’s needed and help each other out”.

But it was also a stressful time, and he urged southerners not to be shy to use the social support services now being advertised.

Though the region’s state of emergency was over “there are still hazards out there,’’ he said.

Asked his reaction to reports EMS had received of whitebaiters on the banks of swollen, swift-moving rivers, he said: “There’s a lot I’d like to say about that, but nothing you could print.

“Basically, keep yourself safe. When there’s been a flood you don’t know what’s under that waterline. There’s often erosion caused by the flood. Walking up to the side of the river – it may give way.’’

Roads also remain especially hazardous to those who are more purposeful than careful.

A family driving a Toyota Prius were trapped by swift-flowing water reaching about the top of the wheels on the Waipounamu Bridge Rd on Friday night.

The couple, with two young children, were rescued by the Riversdale fire brigade, which answered a call-out about 10.45pm and arrived to find the car half off the road.

It was a case that highlighted the need for common sense and planning, the brigade’s chief Mick Stevenson said.

Kavinda Herath/Stuff

Help on its way for a lone sheep.

But he also noted the family were not New Zealand nationals and had “very limited English’’.

They had been driving during the region-wide state of emergency, late at night, to the engorged Waikaia River.

And in a Prius.

“With a car that size it doesn’t take much for swift water to push them off the side of the road,’’ Stevenson said.

It was unclear who had made the emergency call, but the brigade arrived to find some helpers had tried but been unable to tow the car free.

Others who knew the family had been able to take them away once they were extricated.