Cyclone Gabrielle: ‘Nah, we’re just three Māori boys’: the heroes who saved dozens of people are revealed

When Chris Barber yelled out “are you guys the Navy?” to the wetsuit-clad rescuers who’d arrived in an inflatable boat he got perhaps the most Kiwi reply ever uttered: “Nah, we’re just three Māori boys”.

The men who saved Chris, his wife and two children from the ceiling cavity of their Esk Valley home have remained anonymous heroes – but can now be revealed as Mikey Kihi, Rikki Kihi and Morehu Maxwell.

Late on Saturday night, Mikey agreed to tell the story through Facebook messenger. When Esk Valley turned into a raging river, the three set out in a jet boat. These are Mikey’s own words, lightly edited.

“Honestly it all kinda just happened so fast. Rikki showed up at my house at roughly 5am Tuesday, saying to gear up in my wetsuit as we had a family staying in Esk Valley who had lost contact after saying they were climbing onto the roof.

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We raced down to Morehu’s house, as he owns the inflatable jetboat, and planned our move. Next thing we were powering up Hill Rd in a fully loaded 4×4, driving through road slips and fences.

Luckily enough, there were locals around to help us as we had to cut our way through trees which had blown over just to get the other side.

Once we reached the top, in the breaking daylight, the full impact of what was happening started to sink in.

The river stretched from hillside to hillside spanning almost a good 700m of raging water; it took my breath away. Everything from housing to cars was mixed with mud and silt just floating down stream with the current.

We made our way down and proceeded to launch just below Eskdale School. Once we took off, two major challenges presented immediately.

Firstly, what path Morehu had to navigate, I mean there was shit everywhere. Power lines were toppled in all directions and the water was thick with silt making it impossible to gauge depths.

The man (Morehu) had to make split second decisions on the spot.

Secondly, the jet intake kept blocking which meant at 20-second intervals he had to cut the engine to clear it by hand, resulting in me and Rikki clinging on to trees and signs so we weren’t swept away in the current.

Once we had gained a bit of rhythm, we were away. It was at this point we could fully take in the severity of what was going on.

We continued to make our way to the household, not really expecting to see people all around. But they were, most on rooftops. Others in trees bracing from the current or on top of caravans; completely stranded.

Once we got our bearings we motored over to the family trapped in the Eskdale homestead. There was a mother and father with their daughter, all holed up in the high end of the house on top of drawers which were on top of the beds.

There were also about four dogs we rounded up onto the boat. They came from kennels which had washed up against what was now a sandbank.

Once we had everyone on board we had to find a high place to get them, which happened to be the Linden Estate Winery. We raced there and were greeted by others locals who lived on the hillside.

They offered to help get the family warmed up and sheltered as the rain was thundering down. A couple of minutes later, once unloaded, we powered back out into the highway-now-river to be waved down by a couple of old guys stranded on top of their caravan which had been floating downstream on its side.

Both men were exhausted. We managed to latch onto the caravan and help them onto the inflatable. Once secured, we motored them over to the estate unloaded then again back out to search.

When we managed to get clear view up the highway, we saw a guy in orange hi-viz standing on top of a large road works truck, waving out. So we started weaving a path – through all the wreckage and floating debris – towards him.

Another worker, stranded in a tree, yelled out. He wasn’t far off from being washed away by the time we managed to pull up to them both and drag them on board.

The two road workers had been helping with the evacuation that night, when the river banks burst, and had witnessed everyone being swept away.

As we began making our way back to the estate we saw a metal truck with two passengers trapped inside. We got those four out and went back to the estate.

Once back out, we decided to push right up the highway. We had limited options for paths as the water and debris was just carnage.

It was also difficult to hear anyone over the jet engine so visual spotting was our main way to identify people in need.

We saw a man out on his deck in the middle of the raging river wave us down – he was right in the thick of it and it took a bit to manoeuvre.

We yelled out for him and his partner to climb aboard. He refused and said he had a brother with his family, who he feared the worst for. He yelled: ‘No, get them please! They have young kids!’

Making the call, we powered over to the house.”

The three rescuers saved dozens of people in the floods, ferrying them to the Linden Estate Winery where they are still sheltering.