State of Emergency declared in Queenstown, Southland

A State of Emergency has been declared in the Queenstown area as 68 homes have been evacuated due to overnight rain and damage caused by flooding debris.

Mayor Glyn Lewers made the call around 6.30am as officials said some properties on the outskirts of the town had been damaged.

The State of Emergency (SOE) will last an initial period of seven days, Lewers said in an interview with RNZ.

“The current weather event is an active and evolving situation. We have been working with emergency management throughout the night to assess the full extent of the situation in the current conditions,” Lewers said.

“Several flooding and debris events have been identified and we’re continuing to contact affected people including evacuating over 100 people. A temporary evacuation centre has been set up at St Peters Church to manage evacuees who have not been able to relocate.

“Please avoid travel through or around the town centre. If travel is essential, then please take extreme care.”

Lewers said twigs, stumps, gravel, silt, mud and some minor slash were coming down the roads.

He said the declaration gave police the power to call people off the roads.

There is currently no access to the Queenstown Medical Centre, Lewers said, but work was being done to try and open that up as soon as possible.

The SOE has seen several schools and kindergartens close for the day – the last of the school term.

Wakatipu High School principal Oded Nathan said it was due to the SOE and requested for essential travel only, plus the school had limited drinkable water.

Businesses may also have to shut due to the debris, Lewers said.

Teams are working to clear the debris and aim to have the CBD back open in the next few hours, he said.

Queenstown Airport has advised people to only travel to the airport if it is safe to do so, with several roads across the district having been affected by flooding and debris.

A spokesperson said the airport remains open, with no flooding at the terminal, the runway or the airport.

“There’s no flooding in the airport precinct… mainly, I imagine it is just going to be a lot of wet passengers.”

They said that there could be some flow disruptions to scheduling caused by lightning strikes overnight.

Air New Zealand, meanwhile, told Stuff there had only been “a couple” of cancellations on Friday.

Departure boards show that a flight between Christchurch to Queenstown for 10.15am had been cancelled.

InterCity bus services largely remain on schedule. One service between Queenstown and Milford Sound had been cancelled this morning.

Southland MP Joseph Mooney said there had been a slip overnight near the gondola and it had come down near the cemetery Friday morning.

There was no damage to any building, he said.

“We’re a resilient bunch, we will get through this. There is a bit of work ahead of us to fix these issues.

“Stick together and follow the official advice,” he said.

Mooney said more rain was coming and logs could still be seen sitting on the hill.

He said the Southern regions have had a few challenges in a week, as he was in Gore yesterday helping put in sandbags.

Southland State of Emergency

Meanwhile, other parts of the South Island are also underwater, with a region-wide State of Emergency declared for Southland at 6pm Thursday.

On Friday, Gore district mayor Ben Bell said council staff were assessing the damage.

“Quite a few basements and garages have water in them and the fire service will be called to pump them out today. They were amazing yesterday and managed to save about 20 houses from being flooded.”

Most schools in the Gore district were closed. He said the Mataura River was expected to peak at 7pm tonight at Gore but Environment Southland didn’t think it would be too bad.

“It’s looking at being about 4.1m and the 2020 flood was 4.8m,” he said.

His advice to residents was that it was now safe to travel but they needed to be careful with debris if they were driving through floodwaters.

The surface flooding in Gore yesterday was caused by stormwater and wastewater drains being unable to cope with the volumes of water, he said.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush – with climate change we can expect more of these weather events and because of significant under-investment not just by this council but most councils in the last 30 to 40 years we are going to have more of this.

“We need to have significant conversations about three waters with the Government to get some targeted funding for it because it is expensive to fix.”

In a statement on Friday morning, Gore’s council said a lot of roads had reopened as surface flooding had gone down in most places.

However, care was needed as there was likely to be quite a lot of scour damage, the council said.

Southland District mayor Rob Scott was visiting Tuatapere on Friday morning to assess the damage caused by heavy rainfall on Thursday.

Water supply to the town had just been reinstated, he said at 9am.

He had driven through Otautau on his way and said sandbags were being cleared so the roads should be reopened in the next three to four hours or so.

“Those were our two hotspots,” Scott said.

The weather had settled by Friday morning and Scott said he was looking at almost blue skies in Tuatapere.

There were still roads closed though, including SH1 from Glendhu Rd in Mataura to Charlton Rd/Salford St in Gore.

A detour for all vehicles was in place via SH96, Waimumu Rd and Charlton Rd.

Other roads closed include: Otama Flat Rd, Bury St, River Rd, River St, from Hyde to Salford streets; River Terrace, Ontario St, MacGibbon Rd, Woolwich St, Maitland St, from the flood bank; Clyde St, Mataura.

Most schools throughout the district are also closed on Friday as more rain was due to fall.

Metservice duty forecaster Mmathapelo Makgabutlane said some showers were expected in Southland today but the front had moved north of the province.

Rain was still expected in Queenstown for most of the day and snow had already fallen on the Crown Range, between Queenstown and Wanaka.

Snow was expected to fall to about 600m in the Southern Lakes area, and some higher parts of northern Southland may also get snow.

Southland Federated Farmers president Chris Dillon said farmers had plenty of warning to move stock away from rivers and streams so stock losses should not be too bad.

“Anyone in the lower catchment needs to get stock out of the way,” he said.

There was a lot of surface flooding, but he didn’t expect this flood to be as bad as the one in 2020.

However, he questioned whether Environment Southland had done anything to manage the rivers since the last big flood.

“We had 150mm in 2020 and had a big flood. We’ve had 90mm now and we’ve got a big flood again – is there not a gravel problem in the rivers?” he asked.