Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes for several hours in the small town of Picton at the top of New Zealand's South Island on Tuesday as officials feared two dams above the town could collapse after a heavy storm hit parts of the country.
The unseasonal summer storms have lashed central New Zealand since Sunday, causing two deaths, widespread flooding and damage.
Picton, about 30 kms (19 miles) south of Wellington, was hit by torrential rain with 40 millimetres (1.6 inches) falling in 40 minutes, causing flash flooding, and local authorities declared an emergency as they feared the two dams above the town were on the verge of collapse.
About four hours after an emergency was declared at 1:30 pm (0030 GMT) engineers declared the dams safe, allowing most of the up to 1,000 people evacuated from nearby homes to return.
At one point water was lapping over the top of the dams, which contain more than 100,000 cubic metres of water as a back up supply for Picton.
"The dam is no longer overlapping and there is no danger of it rising again unless we get a lot of rain very quickly," Marlborough District Council emergency services manager Ross Hamilton told the New Zealand Press Association.
The situation would be reviewed again on Wednesday morning, Hamilton said. The flash flood also knocked out a pumping station and raw sewage was flowing through some properties.
In the lower North Island large areas, up to 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Wellington, remained inundated by floodwaters, while some districts were hit by a second bout of heavy rain and strong winds on Tuesday. About 500 people were affected.
The weekend storm dumped up to 200 millimetres (8 inches) and had winds of up to 167 kph (100 mph) and has been blamed for two deaths, both of men who went boating in gale force winds on Saturday night.
Floodwaters and swollen rivers, meanwhile, were reported to be slowly receding after they had broken through stop-banks washing away buildings, claiming hundreds of sheep and cattle, and flooding large areas of farmland.
Some people on isolated farms had to be rescued from the roofs of their houses by helicopters as floodwaters rose, and two who tried to flee on horseback were found clinging to a tree after their animals were swept away.
Weather officials said the storms were unusual for the summer season and had been caused by cold air from the Antarctic ice shelf colliding with warmer moist air. "These two ingredients were able to mix together over the North Island and bring wind and rain on a scale that is only seen about once every 10 years," said a spokesman for the MetService.
Comments
Comments are closed.