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A year ago this Thursday the rains came in Nelson and didn’t stop for four days. Some people still can’t return to their homes after the city was hit by over 500 slips. Katy Jones reports.
Red-stickered property owner Laury Dumas finds it hard to see the day when life will be back to normal.
She and partner Yoann Martichon have been out of the home they shared in Nelson with their two young children since it was hit by a landslide, on the night of August 18, 2022.
“I feel like we are in jail,” Dumas said.
“Every day I’m crossing a day [off], and hoping it will end soon.”
BRADEN FASTIER/Stuff
Laury Dumas, left, and Yoann Martichon at their slip-damaged property that they have been unable to live in for 12 months.
The family had just moved into a fourth rental as they waited for the council-owned hillside behind their home in the suburb of The Brook to be made safe enough to return.
An ex-gratia insurance payout that had covered their alternative accommodation until now was due to run out in two weeks, just after the interest payments on the mortgage on their home more than doubled.
While Nelson City Council (NCC) cleared the slip from the back of the house five months ago, the family still couldn’t get into the house to start repairing it, the couple said.
A geotechnical report from the council said the house was at high risk until a retaining wall was built on the slope that failed, and the property would remain red-stickered until then, they said.
The council indicated it would start the wall in November, and that it would take some months to complete.
The wait was not only exhausting, the financial strain it was causing was “huge”, Martichon said.
From the slip last year until April 2024, when they hoped to be able to live in their Brook St home again, they would have spent nearly $95,000 on rent, interest on their mortgage and a cattery for their two cats, he said.
BRADEN FASTIER/Nelson Mail
Martichon and Dumas are waiting for the council to start long term remediation work on the hillside behind their slip-hit family house, before they can move back in. It was hit by a landslide from Tantragee Reserve in Nelson a year ago.
The couple anticipated having to use the insurance settlement for repairing the house to pay for basic living expenses instead, they said.
Their latest rental was the fourth the couple had managed to find, after the owners of the previous rental notified them they were returning to live there (as with the first two rentals).
The service set up by the Government to help people displaced by weather events find temporary accommodation (TAS), told the couple they could still probably only offer motel or hotel accommodation, moving every second week, Martichon said.
The pair didn’t want that for their children, aged 5 and 9, so went through the “stressful” process of trying to find another furnished rental.
It added insult to injury to discover they couldn’t access an accommodation allowance, made available by the Government last month to people displaced by weather events when their insurance payments for temporary accommodation ran out.
That was currently available only to people affected by cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary flooding.
“From the Government’s point of view it looks like it’s all about the North Island, which is fair, because it was a massive disaster there, but they completely forgot about us, actually they never helped us since day one,” Martichon said.
Supplied
The couple and their children remain out of their home in Nelson after this slip hit it a year ago.
They couple initially tried to get help with accommodation from the Ministry of Social Development, but were told they weren’t eligible because they owned their own property, they said.
A spokesperson for the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Carmel Sepuloni, said ministers would “be considering advice soon” about whether to extend its accommodation support payment for storm affected families in Nelson.
TAS spokesperson Ingrid Bayliss said hotels or motels were the “only feasible option for TAS to use” in Nelson, with all five households currently in TAS supply in the city all staying in that type of accommodation.
“TAS recognises that hotels and motels are not ideal for whanau to live in beyond a temporary timeframe, however, where a region has limited temporary accommodation options available, TAS must operate within those limitations.”
Braden Fastier/Stuff
Dumas and Martichon, pictured with daughter Maylee, in February, just before Nelson City Council removed the slip that hit their home from council owned land in August 2022.
NCC group manager infrastructure, Alec Louverdis, said the couple’s property was among 33 impacted by 18 slips from council land, and would be one of the first homes to have long term remediation completed – which took time.
Geotechnical assessments needed to be completed on all the properties before a plan could be presented to the council to decide what level of remediation would be undertaken, he said.
“Council decided in May 2023 that all slips would be remediated to a standard that reduces future risk at a total cost of $17.2m and that repairs would be prioritised according to placard status.”
“Complicated modifications” at the Brook St property included the installation of a 50m landslide barrier that required both resource and building consents, he said.
There were still 13 homes with red placards across the city and 68 with yellow placards.
The Nelson Mail will be looking at the recovery across Nelson this week, as part of the anniversary of the rain event.
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