2 days ago
Clean up continues for Tasman District in wake of widespread flood damage
Jim Papps standing in front of one of his tractors following bad weather in Tasman District.
Photo:
Samantha Gee / RNZ
Throughout the Tasman District, the clean up continues
after two floods caused widespread damage
to homes, businesses, farms and orchards.
For Jim Papps, that's meant scraping mud off the driveway of his Dovedale home and out of his sheds, for the second time in as many weeks.
Papps and his wife Maureen built their home near the Dove River in 1954 and said they've never seen anything like what happened in the last three weeks.
They've experienced flooding before, but this was on a different scale.
"[It's] the biggest flood that we've ever seen, we've had some big floods that have come over the paddock here a few times but this one was the biggest one. Well, it was two floods."
Papps' collection of 14 old tractors are surrounded by silt and sludge. His workshop has a layer of mud through it and there is wood and other debris still strewn across the yard.
One of Jim Papps tractors stuck in the mud at his Dovedale home following the floods.
Photo:
Samantha Gee / RNZ
The couple have spent the last few days scraping mud and silt off their property, retrieving items that floated downstream and clearing up debris.
During the first flood, just over three weeks ago, Papps said he woke in the early hours of the morning and went to check on the river level.
"I got up and shone a spotlight out the toilet window and I couldn't believe what I was seeing, the water was flowing through the yard... and I knew darn well then that it would have been going in our carport down the bottom."
He then went to check on his neighbour, Paul Harper, who for the last 20 years or so had lived in a house bus between the couple's home and the river.
"[Harper] was standing on the porch at the back of his house bus and he was panicking because he couldn't get out, the water was that swift and deep between the shed and his house bus," Papps said.
Papps said the volume of water rushing through the property made quite a lot of noise.
Jim Papps and his neighbour Paul Harper on their property next to the Dove River, in Dovedale.
Photo:
Samantha Gee / RNZ
"I shouted out to him and said, 'I'll get the tractor and come round and bring you out on that', which I got in the bucket of the loader and I brought him out."
Harper said when he awoke and opened the back door of his house truck, he wondered if he was going to get swept away.
"I looked at that water and I thought, there is no way I can step into force of it was just absolutely frightening.
"If it wasn't for the neighbours and for the family here, I reckon I could have bloody died."
Papps and Harper moved the truck away from the river the following week when further heavy rain was forecast and Harper then missed the second flood last Friday, as he'd left in the morning to get some milk and by the time he came back, the roads were closed.
The flood also washed out the approach to the nearby Cowin Bridge, and has left a huge lagoon in part of the nearby Dove River that was once a paddock.
Mud and silt at Jim Papps home in Dovedale.
Photo:
Samantha Gee / RNZ
On both occasions, Harper said was fortunate not to get water inside the truck, with it flowing only an inch or so below the floor. But his tool shed and wood store had been completely washed away and since Friday, he'd been cleaning up, non-stop.
He was feeling, tired, burnt out and frightened.
"Every time it rains, my cat disappears, I'm wide awake, and it's like, oh no, not again and it could only be just a few spits."
Harper already had plans to move to Oamaru next month, but said the floods had pushed that out as he needed to dig his truck out and get it going again.
"I won't park beside a river ever again, bloody way."
Debris by the side of the Dove River in Dovedale.
Photo:
Samantha Gee / RNZ
A helicopter landed in the paddock beside the couple's home on Tuesday, with Nelson Tasman Civil Defence checking in on their welfare.
Civil Defence visited about 300 properties in Tasman on Monday as they continued to survey flood damage.
Teams on Tuesday were focused on Graham Valley, Rocky River, Mārahau, Thorpe, Golden Downs, Tapawera, and Ngātīmoti.
The state of emergency in Nelson Tasman will be lifted on Thursday, as the battered area moves into a one-month transition period.
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