Two cars and the people in them spent all of Friday sitting on a closed South Island highway, one at each end of a wall of mud and rock, while contractors worked out how to get them out. More than 20 slips had come down on State Highway 6 between Makarora and Lake Hāwea, north of Wānaka, and the road was shut at about 7.30am. The occupants were escorted out late in the afternoon, and the highway is expected to stay closed for the rest of the weekend.
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi said in a statement issued at 5.52pm on Friday that both vehicles and their occupants had been escorted safely out of the closure area by roading crews that afternoon. “All those known to be inside the affected area after it closed about 7.30am this morning, because of multiple slips, are now out and accounted for,” the agency said.
An NZTA spokesperson told RNZ that the people who had been stuck were in good spirits, and that one of them had rugged up and watched Lord of the Rings to pass the time. One car had been at the northern end of the blocked section and the other at the southern end.
The road itself is in worse shape than the people who were caught on it. In an earlier update, NZTA said heavy rain from the winter storm that passed through had brought water and debris down from the hillsides onto the highway at more than 20 different locations, including on at least one bridge, at Wharf Creek. “Because there is still movement in the surrounding hillsides, roading crews are having to proceed cautiously with their efforts to clear the slips and inspect the roads underneath,” the agency said. Geotechnical engineering advice is being sought on the risk of further instability before crews get properly stuck into clearing the debris, and a further assessment is due on Monday about when some level of traffic access can be safely restored.
That stretch matters more than its traffic count suggests. It is the only sealed road linking Wānaka and Lake Hāwea to Makarora, the Haast Pass and the West Coast. With it shut, anyone wanting to drive between Otago and the coast faces a detour of several hundred kilometres through the Lindis Pass and Arthur’s Pass, and the small settlement at Makarora is cut off from its nearest supermarket at Hāwea. NZTA has also asked drivers across the central and lower South Island to be wary of the potential to encounter slips on state highways, and warned that the risk of more coming down rises again with more rain.
Further south, Queenstown had a much longer night. Queenstown Lakes mayor John Glover told RNZ that 45 people were evacuated from their homes overnight on Thursday because of flooding, from Gorge Road, Fernhill and the Qbox campground, and moved into temporary accommodation. Nine homes were affected by flooding and building inspections were to be carried out. Firefighters went to about 16 flooding jobs during the night across Queenstown, Frankton, Arrowtown, Wānaka and Lake Hāwea, and Fire and Emergency said there were many other calls about flooded roads and sections that crews did not attend.
A blocked culvert on Dart Place in Fernhill sent water through six properties on Arawata Terrace and Wye Place. Arawata Terrace resident Debra Clarke said her family was evacuated on Thursday night. “About 12am last night my youngest daughter called out ‘mum, mum, mum!’, she saw the water coming up outside. It was gushing down the bank, down the stairway, it was just like a river,” she told RNZ. “Civil Defence arrived and they said they were going to have to evacuate us and turn the power off. We went to the Heritage [Hotel], the staff were awesome looking after us and there’s a bit of camaraderie as we’re all refugees together.” She said there was about an inch of silt through the house, damage to carpet and flooring, and her freshly landscaped garden had been ripped up. Her cat was missing. In 36 years living there she had never seen anything like it.
Wye Place resident Jamie Turner spent Friday helping clear the flooded street. “Two houses over the back are pretty flooded and overflowing. It’s just the blocked drain here and the blocked culvert up the top that causes it,” he said. “I work at the primary school so I went down there this morning to see how many kids turned up because the school was closed, a few turned up.”
The clean up snarled the town. Fernhill and Sunshine Bay Community Association member Simone Bray told RNZ that restrictions at the one mile roundabout brought commuters to a standstill. “The traffic was built up but it was taking people about an hour and a half basically just to go down the hill to get into Queenstown which is normally a four minute drive,” she said. Residents in Fernhill, Sunshine Bay, the Queenstown town centre and Frankton Road have been asked to conserve water while damaged infrastructure is repaired.
The mountains are still unsettled. MetService has lifted its severe weather warnings for the South Island, but the New Zealand Avalanche Advisory has kept warnings in place until Saturday afternoon for Arthur’s Pass, Aoraki Mt Cook, Ohau, Queenstown, Wānaka and Aspiring, with Aoraki Mt Cook rated high and most other areas rated considerable. Mountain Safety Council chief executive Mike Daisley said the council had received reports of significant avalanches coming down to the valley floor. “This is not just a warning to alpine skiers and people heading into high alpine regions and backcountry,” he said. “If people are considering going tramping into sub alpine regions you need to be aware of the hazards above you.” Tongariro is under a considerable risk and Taranaki a moderate one.
Other routes have been opening and shutting by the hour. NZTA reopened the avalanche prone section of State Highway 94 between Te Anau and Milford Sound on Friday to let vehicles move in and out, then closed it again from 4.30pm between the Lower Hollyford Road intersection and Donne River because more snow was forecast, with another reopening expected by mid morning on Saturday after ploughing. The Crown Range Road, which is not a state highway, reopened about 7am on Friday.
The storm dropped more than 300 millimetres of rain on Franz Josef and more than 20 centimetres of snow on parts of the South Island on Thursday. The weather has now moved north. MetService issued heavy rain watches for Northland, Auckland, the Coromandel Peninsula and the Bay of Plenty running from Saturday morning until late Saturday night, with a high chance of an upgrade to a warning for the Bay of Plenty east of the Rangitaiki River, and it is telling people in those areas to clear their drains and gutters.
Have you been caught out by the closures in Otago, or are you cleaning up after the storm. Tell us what you have seen 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 π
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