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Waihī Beach residents were evacuated on Monday afternoon after “widespread flooding” that a local councillor said was the highest he’d ever seen.
It was a “horrible scene”, Western Bay of Plenty District councillor Allan Sole said, with areas had been inundated after a short but strong burst of rain.
A Fire and Emergency spokesperson said they received reports of rising floodwaters about 2pm on Monday. Police were called in to help with evacuations.
A block of pensioner flats on Beach Rd had been hit hard, Sole said, with floodwaters almost reaching windowsill height, and the RSA had been stood up as an evacuation centre.
Allan Sole/Stuff
A block of pensioner flats had water almost reach their windowsills.
Eleven of 19 elder housing units flooded and people had to be evacuated, the Western Bay of Plenty District Council said in a statement.
Most tenants evacuated to the Waihī Beach RSA but some went to family and friends, and the council was “working on confirming who has evacuated where in relation to our elder housing”.
RSA Manager Mel Gearon told RNZ’s Checkpoint at least 15 homes were in an uninhabitable state on Monday night.
“It was basically a torrential downpour, a huge amount of water that came through, a good flash flood there and that’s just had nowhere to go, so it’s pretty much filled up and flooded a few places.”
MANDIE THOMPSON/Supplied
It was surreal to see a man waist-deep in floodwaters on Browns Drive, Mandie Thompson said.
Local residents and businesses were accommodating those who were evacuated, with some heading to private homes and others to a holiday park.
The flooding began subsiding on late Monday afternoon, Gearon said.
A building inspector would assess the safety of affected buildings on Tuesday.
And the council’s phone lines went down about 2pm – amid the bad weather – but calls were being diverted to Tauranga City Council.
Are you in Waihī Beach? Get in touch to tell us about the weather.
Sole, a local community patroller, had been out “making sure people were okay”.
“The rain probably came over a period of a couple of hours…it really came down in a very heavy fall.”
Another affected area was Ocean View Rd, which Sole said was a “common flooding area” because of a nearby creek.
Waihī Beach resident Mandie Thompson said she spotted a large puddle at the end of Browns Drive “and in a matter of 10 minutes there was a car submerged halfway up the driver’s door”.
At one point, floodwaters were waist-deep on a man wading through them.
Allan Sole/Stuff
The Waihi beach area was hit by flash flooding on Monday afternoon.
For Waihī Beach, the impacts of the cyclones were “nothing” compared to Monday’s flooding, Thompson said.
She understood holding ponds behind her property had burst and flooded the road.
The first sign for her was a neighbour’s backyard starting to fill with water about 1.50pm.
When she looked around her own there were “rivers and waterfalls coming from the neighbours properties above us”, she said.
However, the water was receding quickly by about 4pm.
Stuff
MetService rain radar shows the intense rainfall, in purple, over the BOP/Coromandel coast just before 2pm.
And major flooding closed SH25 between Waihī and Whiritoa from about 3pm, Waka Kotahi said.
Allan Sole/Stuff
Police and fire were called in to help evacuate residents during the flooding.
Bay of Plenty Civil Defence had earlier warned of severe thunderstorms near Waihī and Waihī Beach, adding “they are expected to travel south, so they may hit the larger centres in time for school pickup or the commute home. (sorry)”.
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