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CHAPTER 77.

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For miles around Wahanui the air was a vacuum cleaner sucking sound and light upwards towards the black sky, exuding a strange smell reminiscent of when one leaves the handbrake on while driving, a metallic burning after-a-bomb smell of blackened firework shells that lie on the ground after Guy Fawkes.

On Friday night the Deluge began.  Hearing the rain on the metal roof of their single storey iron roofed houses, Wahanui people were joyous; the drought had broken.  The patter on the roofs turned to a steady drumming, which turned into a roar as the rain fell in ever increasing quantities. 

The thirsty land drank the water, soaking it up through the cracks and crevices and the hollows and dry pond beds. Later, with heavy rain still falling, there was a reversal.  The rain no longer disappeared as soon as it landed.  Water began to pond in hollows in the fields, cattle moved uphill wherever they could, the rivers and streams that had been sucked dry and now had no fish began to rise.  And rise.

At first light on Saturday farmers who had not seen the weather that was coming drove out on tractors and farm bikes with dogs running alongside, barking excitedly at the urgency as their farmer sought to move stock to higher ground.  Those who had prepared for a flood waited anxiously to see that their choices for safety for the animals had been correct.  Even so, the rain was so heavy that many went out into the hammering rain to check on their stock.

The streams and rivers and ponds rose and swelled in brown oily surges until they overflowed their banks.  By dawn the drought had become a flood and the wind had become a gale.  Television news commented that this was a common pattern in other parts of the world as a result of climate change.  The reports sounded disdainful, annoying those whose loved ones were out in the maelstrom struggling to cope.  Dips in the roadways became impassable as sheets of muddy water flowed out across the land.  Warnings were issued that people should stay in their houses. 

The small team of detectives was needed as part of the Civil Defence procedures, which involve the police as Emergency Services personnel.  Emergency Services began evacuation procedures in the lower parts of Wahanui, especially the Huatere area where houses had been built in old swamp areas that had been drained.  Ever since that part of the town had been settled the Spring tides which flowed into the harbour had flowed up the pipes and cause minor flooding. 

It was a problem that the Council was always going to fix but the needs of this area of cheap housing always yielded to concerns of the more affluent areas of the town.  This year, with the added pressure of the deluge, the surging tide flowing in added to the water trying to flow out to the sea, causing manhole covers to lift and storm drains to well up instead of drawing water down. 

As the flooding increased, the Emergency Services felt that their efforts were needed on the flat areas that had been reclaimed from the sea.  The hillsides beside the two major valleys were not seen as high priorities because the older established areas had never had problems with water and the new housing development had sufficient slope to clear any amount of rainfall. 

As high tide neared, boats were used by Rescue Services to evacuate houses in the flooded flat areas near the waterfront.  Fire appliances roamed other streets warning people of the dangers to come, as if people did not know already.  While the roads south to Christchurch remained open many left without notifying authorities of their plans creating confusion for the police and the Civil Defence and Emergency Services.  The two lane highway rose steadily until it reached the mountain pass where it became a single lane in each direction.  Both lanes became clogged with south-bound vehicles fleeing to Christchurch or to friends and family en route. . 

The electricity supply shut down quite early when a power station, a key element in the reticulation of electrical energy to a major sector of the city, including Huatere Valley, became flooded.  The power plant had an earth wall a metre high all around it to keep out any flood water.  The earth dam had worked well in the past but over time the driveway to allow access to trucks and workmen had sunk a little.

That was enough to let the rising wall of water pushed by the Spring tide flow over the tar seal of the driveway and into the yard of the power station.  Well protected on one side by a waterproof membrane covered with soil, the earth wall resisted the rising water.  The inside of the flood wall had no such protection. Flowing over the sunken driveway the swirling flood water quickly eroded the soft side of the barrier, which melted like a child’s sandcastle on the beach.

Many people went to stay with friends in areas that were considered safe from the flooding.  Relatives and friends crowded into houses that were high above previous  flood waters.  As night fell, all over the district people snuggled down in their houses, some with electric power but most without.  Those without power made do with candles and camping lanterns.  Wahanui people were hardy souls who knew how to survive bad weather.

Rural areas were next to call on Emergency Services.  The power went off over a large area.  Bridges were topped by the brown surging waters flowing to the sea as fast as they could, pushed on by more and more water flowing from higher ground. Some bridges collapsed, isolating farms and villages.  Cell phones could be used for a short time but in places the towers that relayed messages broke down because they needed electrical power.  Many emergency generators were made inoperable as flooding on a scale nobody had seen before swamped the generating sheds.

There had never been weather like this.  In the early fifties on the Huatere side of the spur on which Cadiz had been built, torrential rain had caused a landslide that smashed a house to pieces and moved others from their foundations.  A playing field was built there when the mess had been cleaned up, the same field that Larcombe had acquired to build the shopping mall. That was then.  Now thoughts turned to Huatere, to the hillside where rumour had it that the ground on one side of the valley was unsafe.