Cyclone Gabrielle: Breeder gets 60 dogs to safety on top of desks at flood-hit school

A school classroom turned makeshift animal rescue shelter as 60 dogs spent the night on top of desks in flood-stricken Pakowhai – but kennel owner Diane O’Neill wasn’t going to leave any pet behind.

Ankle-deep in mud on Friday, the Chesterhope Rd resident sloshed over to the gate to meet Pakowhai School principal Tim Race. “So sorry mate, we had to break into the school,” she said. “There was nowhere else to go.”

Race, who was returning to the 32-pupil school to survey the damage for the first time, assured a worried O’Neill it was fine. “As long as everybody is safe.”

The previous school on a different site had flooded, around 100 years ago, which was hy the current school had been built on the highest place in the area.

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Pakowhai is one of the hardest hit areas in Napier, aside from Esk Valley.

Locals were jetboated out from swamped buildings and rescued from rooftops rescue teams late on Tuesday, after the banks of the Ngaruroro River burst and sent floodwaters rushing across the rural Hawke’s Bay settlement.

Friday was the first time any had been able to access the road to survey the damage, with SH2 between Napier and Hastings having been closed. The majority of houses down Pakowhai Rd to the Nguarongo River are uninhabitable. Debris litters the fields, with caravans, cars, and fences overturned and thrown into orchards.

O’Neill, a breeder who runs Chesterhope Kennels, said she glanced down the road to see a river rushing towards her. She and her husband sprinted to the kennels, piling dogs three into a crate to race them by truck to the school, about 50m down the road. “The water was coming up so quick, we smashed the door open and then we just lifted the dogs up onto the desks,” O’Neill said.

Once the dogs were calm she waded back to her house to save her three cats, carrying them back overhead through waist-deep waters in cages – a usually 2-minute walk that took 25.

But she couldn’t get to every animal. “The thought that will take me to my grave is the sound of all the sheep dying,” she said. Chesterhope Station, at the end of the road, was once home to about 2000 sheep.

The previous Pakowhai School on a different site had flooded, around 100 years ago, which was why the current school had been built on the highest place in Pakowhai. “I’m glad of that now.” He would appraise the damage today.

Further down Pakowhai Rd, Stuff followed resident Geoff Downer to survey his home for the first time after being evacuated on Tuesday around 5pm.

There are four houses on his property, all destroyed.

“My son was on the roof up there,” he pointed, stepping over his wrecked front gate. “And my partner and I were sitting on chairs on the top of the kitchen bench.

“A car floated in the driveway with two adults and two kids in it, and they pushed their way out and on to the roof with my son.”

He watched his cat, Puss, fall off the roof and go meowing off in the turbulent water. “That was the last I saw of her.” He and his terrified partner watched the waters rise until about 5.30pm when the family of four was helicoptered from his son’s roof, and their family was rescued by jet boat.

“We’ve found out that fridges float,” he said, as the door of his son’s house opened to reveal appliances strewn across the room, the fridge resting atop a bench. The hallways are thick with mud. The same in Downer’s house; couches are upside down, artwork – including everything Downer makes for his garden art business – unsalvageable.

It took 45 minutes to go from ankle deep to churning waters at ceiling height. They received an emergency text at 10.30am, but by then it was too late.

He lost eight sheep, four chickens, Puss, two trucks, a van, six cars, and his three-acre section was a swamp. His horse, luckily, had survived.

“I’m going to find some whiskey today,” he said.