Kaikōura declares a state of emergency as the Kōwhai River bursts its banks and cuts the town off

Kaikōura has declared a state of emergency after the Kōwhai River burst its banks on Tuesday morning, forcing more than 130 people from their homes and once again cutting the coastal town off from the rest of the South Island. The declaration came as a slow-moving storm that had already swamped Dunedin and Ōamaru pushed north into Canterbury and Marlborough, dumping close to 200mm of rain near the town in 24 hours.

The Kaikōura District Council said the Kōwhai River breached about 10.26am and that the flooding was expected to follow a similar path to the town’s damaging 1993 flood. A short time later the Conway River, to the south, also spilled over and washed across State Highway 1. Evacuated residents were directed to Takahanga Marae, the Kaikōura Memorial Hall and a local church, with the marae taking in the bulk of those who had left their homes.

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Kaikōura Mayor Craig Mackle told the Otago Daily Times the water was closing in on the town centre. “It hasn’t quite hit town but it’s coming. The Kōwhai has breached, the bank seems to be stopping the main part of it now, but I don’t know how long that’ll last,” he said. His message to residents was blunt. “Get to higher ground, stay home if you can stay home.”

As the day wore on the council widened its evacuation orders to take in people living in the upper Red Swamp area, from Mill Road through to Red Swamp, along with residents in West End, Green Lane and Ludstone Road. Council staff warned the number sheltering at the marae would keep climbing as those households moved out. Power was knocked out to parts of the district, and lines company MainPower said it was “closely monitoring and will commence repairs when it is safe to do so”.

The rain that triggered the emergency was extraordinary even by the standards of a wet South Island winter. RNZ reported that a MetService station just inland of Kaikōura recorded around 195mm in the 24 hours to midday, including 26.8mm in a single hour. Several other stations across the ranges topped 100mm in the same period. A rare Red Heavy Rain Warning, the highest level MetService issues, covered parts of Marlborough and northern Canterbury and was due to stay in force until early Wednesday. Forecasters had warned that up to 400mm could fall on the worst-hit ranges before the system finally cleared.

A red warning is reserved for events where forecasters believe there is a genuine threat to life. It signals dangerous river conditions, significant flooding, slips and roads that are likely to become impassable, and it tells people in the warning zone to act rather than wait and see. The storm had already prompted a state of emergency further south in Waitaki, where Ōamaru bore the brunt of flooding on Monday, and the northward march of the same system is what tipped Kaikōura into crisis a day later.

State Highway 1 was closed overnight between Waipara in Canterbury and Ward in Marlborough, a stretch that runs the length of the Kaikōura coast and is the main road link between Christchurch and Picton. The Inland Kaikōura Road was also shut near the Cribb Creek Bridge, leaving the town effectively boxed in. The New Zealand Transport Agency pointed drivers who absolutely had to travel between the top and bottom of the South Island towards a long inland detour through Springs Junction and Nelson, but warned that route was itself at risk of closure from rain and snow, and urged people to simply delay their trips. “An update will be provided tomorrow morning on the status of the state highways,” the agency said in an evening statement.

For Kaikōura, being cut off carries a particular weight. The town was severed from the outside world for months after the November 2016 earthquake tore up State Highway 1 and the main trunk rail line, and the long, expensive job of rebuilding those routes is still fresh in local memory. A decade earlier the 1993 flood, the benchmark the council reached for on Tuesday, sent the Kōwhai across the same low-lying ground that was filling with water again. Residents who have lived through both know how quickly the rivers that ring the town can turn.

Emergency services and Civil Defence teams spent the afternoon moving people out of the expanding evacuation zones and checking on those who could not leave on their own. Images published by 1News showed brown water spreading across paddocks and lapping at fences on the edge of town, with sandbags stacked against doorways and stock moved to higher ground. The marae, which has become a familiar refuge for the district in a crisis, opened its doors once more.

By Tuesday evening the immediate picture was one of a town holding its breath. The main body of the Kōwhai had, for the moment, been checked by a bank, but nobody was confident it would hold with more rain still to come and the ground already saturated. The council’s advice stayed simple through the day. Move early, keep off the roads, and do not try to drive through floodwater.

People right across the upper South Island were being asked to stay home where they could, keep away from swollen rivers, and follow instructions from Civil Defence and local councils as the storm ran its course. The wettest of the weather was forecast to ease from Wednesday, though the clean-up in Kaikōura, Marlborough and the wider Canterbury high country looked set to run well beyond that.

Were you caught up in the Kaikōura flooding, or have you been cut off by the storm elsewhere in the South Island? Tell us how your community is coping in the comments below.

This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂