Precipice
Stories of landslides and community restoration in Muriwai New Zealand following the devastating 13 February 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle.
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Precipice
Turbo Prop Engines on Full: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai. Ep.1 Precipice Podcast
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In this episode I speak with Abe Dew. Abe was a long time Muriwai resident who was never to return to his home after the cyclone and now lives out of Muriwai in nearby Waimauku. He used his marketing and advertising strategy experience to support the recovery and restoration of Muriwai.
Abe talks about the traumatic night of the cyclone for his family: evacuating to the Surf Club, the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, dealing with insurance, the buy out process and managing disputes, and considerations when buying their new home.
We discuss why and how Restore Muriwai was created, interacting with politicians and the Auckland council, communicating with the media, his views on weather events in Aotearoa and how the experience affected him and his family emotionally.
Precipice launched on July 20th 2026. 3 seasons will be released across 4 weeks and then the full series of 26 episodes will be available for you to listen to at your leisure.
Season 1: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai
Season 2: Disaster Recovery and Community Restoration
Season 3: Community Initiatives after a Cyclone
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Hosted and produced by Mandy Jakich. Commissioned and funded by Muriwai Community Association, supported by the Auckland Council Recovery Office.
On the 13th of February 2023, the small, vibrant coastal community of Murawai Beach, northwest of Auckland, New Zealand, was ripped apart by Cyclone Gabrielle. This podcast captures what happened on the night and in the days, months and years that followed. Join me, Mandy Yakic, as I speak to fellow Murrui locals, volunteers, and those involved in the emergency and recovery effort. Hear about their experiences of loss and upheaval, the impact on their lives, and the community-led initiatives that helped Murrui find a way forward. Welcome to Precipice. In this episode, I speak with Abe Diou. Abe was a longtime Murrui resident who was never to return to his home after the cyclone, and he now lives out of Murruai in nearby Waimoku. He used his marketing and advertising strategy experience to support the recovery and restoration of Mirua. Abe talks about the traumatic night of the cyclone for his family.
AbeWe hear this noise which sounded like a Hercules flying over the house, and you know, like turboprop engines on full, and then we thought, Christ, what was that? Was that a low-flowing aircraft or something? But there was no impact. It was it was literally like six feet above the house. Evacuating to the surf club. It's like Noah's Ark, you know, wet, cold animals, people, people in shock, um, people who um had uh didn't know where their loved ones were, um, people consoling other people. It was just uh terrible, you know. It was wonderful because we were there, but the water the whole of the floor had flooded, and uh so it was wet and damp and cold and nobody knew what was going on. And by that stage, um the hillsides had already collapsed uh in several places, the roads were mostly impassable, um, and it it was a full-on disaster. Dealing with insurance? We realised that insurance is not fit for purpose for this this new environment, and that when you buy a property, you buy the title, which is the land area, um, and the house is on it, but when you insure it, it's only the house that's covered, so the land is completely uninsured effectively, uh except within a seven metre radius of the house.
MandyThe buyout process and managing disputes and considerations they now had to make before buying their new home. We discuss why and how Restore Muriwai was created, interacting with politicians and the Auckland Council.
AbeSo that's institutional understanding of a system which is impenetrable to most people other than a rates bill. And um and and it also means that you kind of bypass the council are a faceless entity that's out to get me, and you realise that council are a group of people who really want to do the right thing if they possibly can.
MandyCommunicating with the media, his views on weather events Aotearoa
AbeIt was a pretty extraordinary month. So we had two one in a hundred year and one and one in two hundred and fifty year events within the course of about four or five weeks, which kind of puts the sword to all of those metrics. They're all rubbish. Um you're looking backwards at a past which we're never going to see again, and a future which nobody knows what it's gonna look like.
MandyAnd how the experience affected him and his family emotionally.
AbeMy name's Abe Dew, and the first time I ever came up to Muriwai, I was about must have been about three or four years old, and um it was a whole with a whole bunch of family friends uh driving down the beach to collect Oh, and so that was just like a vivid memory of running along the sand, being chased by my dad with seaweed and things like that. And so um years later, when I was at university, I used to just uh jump in my old Morris Minor and blast all the way out through the western suburbs and arrive at the beach uh with a rubbish bag and just pick up rubbish and walk along the um beach in the filthy weather just to uh get my head straight. And so it's always been a place where I expected it to be moody and wild, and that's part of its charm. So uh, you know, eventually when I bought a house, I uh decided to get one in Murawai because a friend had bought out here, and I saw what a spectacular location it was, so it reminded me. And I thought if you've got to nail yourself to a bank, you may as well get something you really love. So uh it was a tremendously inconvenient choice, but a brilliant choice, and um yeah, so we lived here for 25 years, including the 18 months after Suckling Gabrielle, where we were red sticking out of our house and ended up in a rental, and now we've moved to Waimauku, which is as close as we could find, um, but a significant change from where we were because like after a quarter of a century, it's good to mutate and survive.
MandyAnd you've raised four children here?
AbeYep, um, spectacular. You know, I moved out here because of the physical location, but what having kids in the neighbourhood taught me is that it's the people, and um that's how we met them. So through our kids' uh families, we kind of got woven into the community, met people, connected with them, um, and really became part of the fabric of the place. So uh that was absolutely brilliant, and also for them it was a an experience of growing up in a in a truly wild, free, passionate environment, um, close to the water, which I love, and and all of them do too. So it's just yeah, a brilliant space to grow up. And yeah, get it's on the fringe, but often the best things and change comes from the fringe. So um I figure that they'll be quite capable of navigating the urban world in their lives, but they'll always carry this place with them.
MandyYeah, and it really gets under your skin, and I think all of our kids growing up here will never forget this place.
AbeYeah, it'll always be a benchmark for what what uh quality of life feels like. Um so I suppose our awareness of things for changing uh happened uh a couple of years earlier than that, in April 2018, when there was a storm with no name that came through, and it was actually a hurricane, and uh the whole of West Auckland was absolutely devastated, trees were blown over, and it came out of nowhere, and there was no warning about it, and it just like belted the whole community, and and we all kind of looked and thought, wow, you know, um what was that? Where did that come from? And so uh in 2023, um when Suckland Gabrielle was coming, it was one of a sequence. So um the January when we usually go camping just after New Year's Eve, we were at Tauwharanui and it rained non-stop for seven days. Um, and then that was early January, and then on January 27th, when which was actually my mother's funeral, uh was the Auckland Anniversary Day uh floods where I was dropping my family home to a flat and glasses back to Glengarry's at the bottom of town, and the whole of Victoria Street was about to completely and I think Victoria Park was gonna go underwater. Um, and then a fortnight after that, Cycling Gabrielle came. So it was a pretty extraordinary month. So we had two one in a hundred year and one and one in two hundred and fifty year events within the course of about four or five weeks, which kind of puts the sword to all of those metrics, they're all rubbish. Um, you're looking backwards at the past, which is we're never gonna see again, and a future which nobody knows what it's gonna look like. So um there was a fair bit of warning about Saclan Gabrielle, I remember. So we did what we always do. We um supplied got plenty of water, we got petrol for the generator, we made sure that we um you know had we Maria actually thought to pack go bags uh just as a just on the off chance. Um, but pretty much we um buckled in for a long night of of heavy rain, which is what we always did, and um didn't expect anything terribly much to happen.
MandyCan you talk me through what actually happened for you guys?
AbeYeah, um the kids were all in bed, and at about 10 45, uh the rain is going sideways into the house, and it has been since about four o'clock. So the first part of the storm was actually quite mellow, and uh the rain just like um started dialing up at about four in the afternoon, but by 10.30 at night it was just like driving sideways into the house. And at about 10.45 we heard this uh Maria and I were um lying on the couches watching TV, and we hear this noise um which sounded like a Hercules flying over the house, and you know, like turboprop engines on full, and then we thought, Christ, what was that? Was that a low-flowing aircraft or something? But there was no impact. It was it was literally like six feet above the house, and so we and then the lights flick and the TV went out, the whole house went black. And we're used to, you know, um we're used to giving people packets of candles when they moved to Mirawai because they're gonna need them eventually, and uh so we sort of broke out the the um lanterns and things, and my son who had been gaming downstairs in his bedroom came upstairs and said, Uh Dad, my window's leaking because of the rain, so um you know literally water was pouring through the all the crevices around the sides of the window in his bedroom. So I went down to the car to get some gaffer tape to gaffer tape up the windows, and after I'd done that, I thought, what the hell was that noise? I've got to check it out. So I um went down the drive and onto the road and went down the road, and the road was about a hundred mil deep and running water like a river, and the whole road had been completely covered up by a mountain of dirt, literally about two stories high, giant mountain of dirt. Um, on the way back up, I met my neighbour JT, who was um busy directing traffic away, like rescue vehicles and things, because that slip was the first one which the two firefighters got killed by. Um, and um, so I went back up to the house and said, Maria, we gotta get in our cars and we've got to leave. We've got to get out of here right now. We've got to wake up the kids, uh, we've got to get them out of bed and we've got to go now. And she said, What car should we take? And we said, I said, both. Uh, and so you know, we woke up the kids, and my eldest son, who'd been gaming, was a um lifesaver. So he said, Let's go to the surf club. You know, they've got bunks down there, we'll be fine. Uh so we couldn't go down the road because that was completely blocked. So we went up round down Witea Road and the Surf Club, or tried to get to the surf club, but the um the yeah, the the the access via sand dunes was completely flooded. So we went up Waitia and then parked on the um where do we park? We parked on the on the rugby field, I think, um, and and then had to walk again through um n almost needy water past a car which had fallen into a ditch on a road which had been completely rutted out. So someone had been trying to get down to the surf club and their car had just fallen into a a meter deep hole. Um and by this stage we're all pretty freaked out. So um we you know we get into there and there's already um like a hundred people who've also self-evacuated, and this is about eleven o'clock at that stage. Yeah.
MandyHmm. And and do you know if at that point there was sort of notice coming out to tell people to go to the surf club, or was it just some somewhere locals thought would be a good place to go?
AbeI think it's we thought it'd be the best place to go because we needed a bed and we didn't trust the hillside um next to us because we'd just seen what had happened to it. Um the no notice came out until hours later at about one o'clock in the morning, when um by that stage hundreds of people had turned up at the surf club, all wet, all in shock and all terrified. And suddenly anyone who's got a working cell phone it starts going and it's just like freaking people out. And by that stage, um the hillsides had already collapsed uh in several places, the roads were mostly impassable, um, and it it was a full-on disaster. But it was hours after um we decided to get the hell out of Dodge. Yeah.
MandySo um, how did you find the surf club? I know it was flooded and a bit of a mess.
AbeThe surf club was like um I I wrote an article about it, but it was like Noah's Ark, you know, wet, cold, animals, people, people in shock, um, people who um had uh didn't know where their loved ones were, um, people consoling other people. It was just uh terrible, you know. It was wonderful because we were there, but the water the whole of the floor had flooded, and uh so it was wet and damp and cold and nobody knew what was going on. So dark. Yeah, and dark, pretty much, and and just the what you forget is the smell, and maybe that was the the the big thing from the from the morning after, but the whole of the neighborhood just stank of wet mud and filth and dead septic systems, and it was overwhelming, but like the the damp and the wet and the cold. People who had fought their way through trees and rain to get there with kids trying to keep them calm, uh, and were terrified themselves and had no idea what was going on. So we got there early enough to get some bunks, and so I said um to some people, do you do you want them? And yeah, and my son um stepped up and said, What can I do? Because he was a s um lifesaber, so they said we need trenches around this place, start digging, and they handed him a spade and he did. And so, yeah, now he's in the army. He saw the he saw the um unimogs arrive hours later and thought this is cool. This his comment when we arrived was this is some World War Z shit right here. And uh so he was totally at his element. Yeah. What were you most worried about in that moment? The cat. Uh so we'd had to leave the house without the cat, and so at two o'clock I tried to go back to pick him up, and that was probably about the time that the house next door was getting wiped off the face of the earth, so it's really lucky that I didn't. And by that stage, all the fire service guys had created uh roadblocks up and down the road, and they just said, No way, you're not going back, you can't, is there's no way to get back. Um, yeah. So so that was my that was my priority at that stage.
MandyYour house, you had a big slide next to it, but it wasn't actually hit. Yeah. But you weren't allowed back. So can you tell us what happened for your family?
AbeThe we weren't allowed back, but nobody told us that at that stage. So the first thing I did was get the two older kids and go back the next morning and get their school uniforms and and vital papers and things, and um and trudge through the mud. And I think that was necessary, but also probably a really bad idea, because they had no idea what to expect. So that really traumatised my daughter quite a bit in terms of seeing the devastation around the place, because uh, as we were walking up the track, um there were still slips happening, quite large runs along domain um along Mudatara Road, so we could hear those, you know, huge rumbling. What the hell was that? And we met our neighbours on that track and they said, uh, you know, our house is gone. And um so we thought, well, we don't know what we're gonna see, we don't know what to expect. And so our house was um untouched at that stage, so right right next to this giant, huge bright orange scar uh on the land. Um there it stood, but the driveway was completely covered, so we had to essentially wade in calf height mud through this slurry, liquefied, gunk, thick, gooey chocolate custard sh shit um to get to the house, which is pretty horrible and get those things, and that I think is what really um got inside my daughter's head for quite some time, and so she was hugely emotional about it and didn't want to go back to the house at all for a long, long time. Because um she sensed that the life we'd had in the place that they'd grown up and the place where their fennel were buried uh was gone to a huge degree, you know, it just didn't feel the same. Didn't we didn't trust it as a home anymore because we'd seen that it could be destroyed.
MandyHow old was your daughter then?
AbeShe was probably about thirteen, yeah. And uh yeah, which is you know old enough to help out and and old enough to trust to go back to the house. Um and she's she's also a lifeguard now, so she's got a little head on her shoulders, but um the impact of that was immense, I think.
MandyWhat did you do from then and how did you figure out what you needed to do?
AbeUm well Maria and I um were really lucky in that we agreed there and then that that we would just couldn't face living in that house. First of all, we'd had we'd raised our children there, we'd been living there for almost 20 years, um, and or maybe longer, and the the whole aspect of it had changed. We were no longer surrounded by beautiful bush, we were surrounded by this terrifying scar. And we just thought if it can happen s seven metres away from our house, it can happen to our house. You you should not, you know, we would not be able to sleep in that place overnight with uh with kids in the rain. Um and so you just can't you can't be there as a family, it just doesn't make sense. So we were completely agreed with that. We had to find a way to get out. The house wasn't touched, so we contacted insurance and they said, Well, we can't really help you because um none of your insurance is valid because the house has to be damaged. Um we got a very small amount oh no no I'm wrong. They they actually gave us um because after we were red stickered, they gave us uh an accommodation allowance um which lasted probably about six months, and um, and a small amount for damage to um the fridge and freezer which we couldn't retrieve. But within three days uh we got red stickered, which means it was it was deemed to be a um not safe for human habitation, and so we weren't allowed there. Um fortunately ours was just on the edge of the exclusion um area with the the barriers. So my wife Maria and I proceeded to loot our own home for the next month and a half, and every night for those first few weeks when nobody knew what was happening, I'd um backpacked my way into the house through the forest, parking down at the tennis courts, um, and put everything that we wanted in boxes, and we wanted everything because we didn't know if the house was going to be destroyed in the next rainstorm. Um so everything, all the kids' pictures, you know, art that we collected, um bits and pieces, trinkets from travel and stuff like that. We wanted we wanted so um I would go in and spend hours um putting it in boxes and packing out what I could pack out on a bicycle down the path in the dark, which was madness, my wine collection, um bottles of vintage port for the children which I bought, um, blasting down um in the pitch blackness on a mountain bike through a forest. Uh it was it w I lost probably about 15 kg with pure adrenaline over that month. And then eventually we were allowed um some small access windows to get into the house again to pick up stuff, and that was um facilitated through the council um and with Red Cross helping, providing manpower. So they were amazed when they get to the house and discover everything was already to go in boxes, and uh so it was literally just to put uh you know, and also the the other members of the um community who were our friends just like all volunteered trucks um and just like formed human chains and things just to provide it. So we were never alone through that period, even though it was just us as a family, we were constantly supported. What I've missed out, which is really important, is that um after the event when we got back to the um surf club and were thinking, what the hell do we do? Um, we got approached by Erin who had been beating her local network and had said um hey there's an um there's a two-bedroom apartment um in the neighbourhood. Would you guys be interested? And so um we said yes. And so on the second night we were actually into a place where we could stay for about the next four or five months, I think.
MandyThat's amazing. Yeah.
AbeYeah, and what what what road was that in? That was on uh White Year Road. So within 24 hours of being um realizing we couldn't live in our house anymore, we'd been given an apartment to live in with um all six of us, two-bedroom place um on Domain Crescent. And that was one of the distinguishing features of experiencing this whole thing in Muraway versus um many other experiences I've heard in in the inner city is that um we had a whole community wrap around us and and find us a place to live and um you know provide food and provide meals and provide support. Uh whereas a lot of other people who who we subsequently con made contact with over the proceeding of the of the the next um year just felt completely alone. You know, they they had no one to talk to, none of their communities supported them, um, you know, they just uh ended up trying to talk to lawyers and that that often ended up in a total dead end. So yeah, we were super lucky.
MandyAnd then that that trouble that you had with insurance, how did you actually resolve those issues?
AbeWell, insurance, um insurance is the first place you go and um probably the last place you'll get help. So un unless you're like our neighbours whose house was wiped off the face of the earth and she had had a dream a fortnight beforehand where her mother, who has is deceased, had come to her and said you need to renew your insurance on the house. And so the the the Monday before the the the Thursday of the storm or whatever, she had just increased the cover for their house, and so they got completely paid out by their insurance company. And when the council purchased their land, they um they said, Well, you know, uh, can we give you a dollar for it? And so one of the guys from the council had to go down to their car to find a dollar to hand them. Um, but we realized that insurance is not fit for purpose for this this new environment, and that when you buy a property, you buy the title, which is the land area, um, and the house is on it, but when you insure it, it's only the house that's covered, so the land is completely uninsured effectively, uh except within a seven-metre radius of the house. And so for a property like ours, which was half an acre, um, a tiny fraction of that was actually insured. And uh, when you're dealing with slips, the um it's the unknown because like you've got gravity working on the bit of land that's way outside the area covered. Um, so we had a 20 meter long slip that was forming above a house and would wipe us out uh if we stayed there and is still there. Um and and that was completely uninsurable, or you know, the the insurance that we had could not contemplate that that would be a reason that. The house was therefore unlivable and you should be paid out. So insurance is not fit for purpose in its current regime. It it's um it's a relic of a much more stable world.
MandyCould you talk us through the government and council, Auckland Council buy-out process?
AbeThe the buy-out was a long-term journey. Um, but because of the relationships that people like Mike had in the community with people in council, um, they were able to provide really good advice, you know, treat them like people. These are people who want to do a good job, they want to feel proud of what they're doing, they want to help if they can. Um, and if you don't, if you're actually working with them to get the result that you we all need, they need a good result, we need a good result, what's that result look like? Well, here's an idea, um, then then it's much easier to get the result we needed. So my wife Maria kind of really emerged um as a powerhouse of the Restore Muraway, um, the creation of that that group. And uh along with a lot of other people in the community who who also stepped up. So what was immediately apparent is that there were people who were either really badly affected and needed help and wanted to make change, or there were people who weren't badly affected but wanted to help and make change because they realized that this is the community they live in and and it was not going to be the same, and unless they acted, it was gonna be much worse. So, how could they get the best result for everybody? And um, my role was work my um career has been in advertising and marketing strategy, and that's how to create a message which is simple and compelling and people can understand. So, in some of those early meetings where people said, What do we do? What do we call ourselves? So, I ran a naming workshop and we came to the idea of restore Murawai. Um, suggestions were like save Murawai and um you know Murawai needs your help kind of stuff. Um, but the the objective was not to not to portray the disaster, but to but to um present the solution. And so restore Murawai kind of came became a rally and cry, which then became um something which was uh used by many other communities, the kind of platform that Maria helped create in terms of a database and a Facebook page and somewhere where people could contribute um and communicate um got adopted by a lot of other communities. First the West Coast beaches up and down uh Pihar, Bethles, places that were also really badly affected, but then places that had never really managed to organize themselves properly on the shore where there was a huge amount of damage, and and they would they just kind of saw this as a template which was working, so we kind of open sourced it. And the really important thing about having that idea of a of a of a of a group of people working together is that that was a an entity the council could deal with. Um whereas the council can't deal with individual landowners, they're not, they're just not they're just not built to do that, but they are built to deal with lobby groups and community organizations, and so if we could create this as a community organization, which then became a regional communication organization and then became an Auckland-wide network of groups, that gave us real leverage when we went and presented to council about what we needed. So our interest was always in Muraway, but our approach to it was that anything that was going to be good for Muraway had to be good for any other suburb as well, because it we we couldn't ask for special um treatment. So therefore, we kind of pushed ahead and um and presented and made our case about why um precedents from other places like New South Wales, where they'd had really devastating floods and fires in Victoria, about um what community buyouts looked like. Um part of the work of the group was also to liaise through political connections that some members had um with parliamentarians who had access to researchers, and so we were um getting, you know, precedents of buyouts in West Auckland and across the country to to actually say that we're not asking for anything that hasn't been done before, we're just asking for something which um looks a bit different from what's been done before, but will work better. And so, you know, because that was the big nobody knew what the answer was going to be, and so we had to fight for the answer we needed, which was um an equitable uh solution, which meant that 64 households wouldn't be totally destroyed. Floods are really easy, um, and and the the biggest you the bigger issue in Auckland has been flooding. But floods when your house is flooded, they can say your house is unlivable because it's in a floodplain. Slips are really difficult because when they look at a property, they can't say, well, that's gonna slip or this is gonna slip. Um, yeah. So at the same time, the council were going through their process of getting geotechnical engineering reports done on the whole neighbourhood and having meetings where we were presented with initial findings which were really dire and said, you know, essentially you can't, you know, you shouldn't be living here because it's not safe, it's an intolerable risk to life. Um and what we had to do was use that information and then present it back to the council to say, therefore, you should buy us out. Because when the actual initial assessments came, a lot of people who thought they were gonna be bought out were told, no, you can keep living there. And that was a bit of a shock after six to nine months to be told that um, even though you didn't trust your house, you knew there was a slip waiting to fall onto it. Um, that in fact um these guys in a in an abstract theoretical report had said no, it was cool, you can be there. When we were told that we just said, no, we're not gonna accept that. I'm really sorry, we're gonna fight and we're gonna get bought out.
MandySo you had the contacts um and the right sort of people within the community to help you with this, but how did you actually meet with the council? Because that's what a lot of communities have so much trouble with.
AbeFirst of all, because we created ourselves into an organization, we therefore um uh they they could communicate with us because we represented a critical mass of of of ratepayers with with a with aligned interests um that that also spread across Auckland. Um we were also really lucky in that some pe some council whisperers came to us, um, Penny Hulse, and said, um, this is how council works, this is this is what this this is what council dynamics are, this is how council meetings happen, this is how people present to council, uh, this is how you get your five-minute meeting, this is how three of you present on on different parts of the same topic and turn it into a 15-minute window that you can get to talk about yourselves rather than the usual five. So that was invaluable, and and that meant that we could submit questions to council, which would be presented by councillors, which we could then answer in order to provide the um wider council with the information we needed.
MandyAbe explains the connection with Penny Hills and uh the role that she had in Orton Council.
AbeShe was ex-ex-deputy mayor. Okay, and um she stepped up, she knew that she had seen some of the stuff that Maria had been doing and recognised herself at a at a difficult a difficult time and a and a younger age and and a and a cause and a fire in a belly. Um so she kind of said up you you if you guys are going to talk to council, here's who you need to talk to, here's here's uh the the people who will be up against you in their agendas.
MandyThat's a great resource to have.
AbeSo that's institutional understanding of a system which is impenetrable to most people other than a rates bill, and um and and it also means that you kind of bypass the council are a faceless entity that's out to get me, and you realise that council are a group of people who really want to do the right thing if they possibly can, but they've got a hell of a job and they've got immense systems to go through. Um so so she was absolutely instrumental in in getting that access. And then the communications and marketing skills that Maria and I have helped um, you know, push out surveys, get the information we could present in pie charts, um, find quotes that would be compelling. Um so we made an impactful um you know five-minute presentation to council saying this is the this is the degree of support behind these ideas and why you should take them seriously um and how to do it. At the same time, we were using the parliamentary press um connections that we had to communicate with um the deputy prime minister at the time, Carmel Seppaloni. Um, and so members of the community stepped up and um had dignitaries coming through our houses. Um we had the um the leader of the Green Party at the time, Carmel Seppaloni, the Deputy Prime Minister, um the Deputy Mayor, um Desi Simpson, um the ombudsman for for the government, the uh CEO of Auckland Council all come through our house at different times, be shown what it was like to live in a place, and therefore for them to feel that you shouldn't be living here. Um, and and all of them could understand. Um so once they understood it as people, um, rather than uh as recipients of angry emails, uh they could see, yeah, okay, I get it, I understand. Here's here's here's how to help keep this ball rolling, keep me in touch, keep me in the loop. And and that became really powerful um for actually making change. And I think it's a function in New Zealand as well, in that it is a small place. Um, if you're ballsy enough, you can introduce yourself to the people who you know you need to meet and know. And as Kiwis, we kind of got that right. We don't have those impermeable hierarchies of class and s and structure that you'll get somewhere in like the UK um or money and and and access like you do in Australia. You can you can get to the people you need to meet and make a difference. Um part of that was also um writing feature-length articles at six months in one year on the plight of Muri that um were published in the Auckland Herald because we couldn't be seen to be um just like a needy group with our hands out. We had to get the wider public of Auckland behind us if we could. So that's something I stepped up to. And and you know, never in a million years at the beginning of 2023 did I ever imagine that I would appear on TV with my family and my kids, um, that I would be writing letters in the Herald that we would be um presenting to the council, that we would be um, you know, as a community in the situation we were. So even though it was a disastrous year for so many people, it was also a really exhilarating one in a weird way, because it just was a crash course in learning a whole bunch of skills and a whole bunch of stuff about systems that I never thought I'd ever have to understand.
MandyAnd how did you actually manage to do all this work when you do have, you know, a job?
AbeUh well, lucky uh in in 2018 I turned 49, and in advertising it's an industry that respects youth and novelty, uh neither of which I possessed anymore. So um I pretty much gone freelance um and could could, you know, uh help out. But Maria was working full-time and um, you know, she she managed to do a huge amount. It's exhausting, utterly exhausting, and um that's where you couldn't do it if you were doing it by yourself. Um and that's where the the support of the community came around and wrapped around because a lot of people went really, really ragged, um, emotionally burnt out from what they were going through in their private lives, um, and physically exhausted from dealing with a whole range of things and having to learn stuff that they'd never thought they'd need to get their heads around in it real fast, and with the specter of losing your house and your everything you'd put into your mortgage and your financial security and your family's security and well-being on the line. So it was high stakes, and so we treated it really seriously. It became um the thing you'd fight for pretty, pretty hard, really quick, and so um, you know, and people react differently. Um some people retreat and and others others um lead in and others want to get stuff done publicly and others want to get stuff done privately. Um, but but fortunately there was enough of everyone to make a difference.
MandyYeah, so true. And I think that's was one of the successes is you know, the different types of people that came on board, and they all had different strengths and different approaches, and it seemed to work like that really well.
AbeIt did, and it was really fluid as well. So people would come in as and when they needed when they can contribute and uh according to what they had to get done, and then they kind of move on. So at no point and w was anybody interested in creating an empire or or you know, like r an entity which they could then define and rule, and that's what we kind of saw in some other groups which have been around for a while, that that they had formed really strong personality, um, led um cultures, which meant that it was really hard for other people to contribute to them or to work with them, um, because it was it was all about an individual rather than a community, and so you know, we worked really hard to get the result we needed, and at that point we said, okay, we'll we'll hand it over to the next people who who've got a different set of priorities, and it's about you know real recovery from Uruguay after after all the buyouts happened, um, and that was fine, and you know, so so we the the shame of that is that some of the institutional memory gets a bit lost. Um, so the first thing we did and you were involved in it was was say, okay, we've got all these great contacts at council now. How can we get a really cool artwork made to um commemorate this thing and and remember it? Um and so, you know, and that was a that was something which is also a reflection of Muraway. People were um where people stepped up to help with recovering and making sure the community was cool, but also not that it shouldn't be forgotten and that we could create something um meaningful as a result of it.
MandyIs there anything else that you can think of that you could say to other communities who have been through a similar event?
AbeYeah, so one of the things that um one of the reasons Penny um helped us was because she was really interested in how to how to help communities prepare for these sorts of things. And we're all aware of civil defense, which is about infrastructure and safety and objects and places and landscapes, but this is really about civic defence and it's about real um the relationships of people to each other, bonds of community, bonds of care, um, looking after out for each other. And so the what made Mirrorwise such um a success in terms of hopefully how we've dealt with this thing, um, is the fact that those bonds of pre-existing, we actually functioned really, really well as a as a tightly knit community of people who more or less liked each other and understood each other and got on, left each other alone when they needed to, but but was were ready to step up and provide for each other when I had to. Um and and that was the difference. So when I think of the people in um that we talked to through the course of the um r recovery who uh had been red sticking out of homes in Teatatou, and one guy in particular had had to watch his house be burgled on his um his home security system four times, call the police, he's not allowed to be there, he's not allowed to do anything, um, but his house is being ripped off with all this stuff still inside it, and um he just felt utterly hopeless. Um, whereas it was really clear that um that the whole community was gonna look after Murawai. It was a bit of an unusual situation, you know. The whole community was kind of locked down, sort of necessary, but kind of odd as well. We didn't react to it like it was like a military occupation, I don't think. Um I think I got the feeling that that Mirawaians kind of related to it as helping look after themselves and helping the place ill and be calm for a bit. Um so yeah, the important thing was the people um looking out for each other. One of the things we helped organise um up front was media training. And um so a friend of mine who worked for the the Wine Guild and his wife who worked for the New Zealand Olympic Council came down to the Surf Club and the group of people who had stepped up to help spearhead the thing all got training on how to talk to the media, how to present to themselves, how to make a point, how to structure an argument, how to how to create a soundbite. Um, and and that would get run and that would be aligned with with a consistent message around um Miroi needs you needs needs to be um restored. And um and that was really vital. And that's something which, you know, media training is something you think politicians and and um executives, but in fact for the public it was a real breakthrough and meant that we became the kind of go-to community for the news and the radio. Um, what's happening, you know, where's it at? And we fed them with stories and we um made sure that we knew never never got forgotten.
MandySo that's do you think that contributed to the sort of the successful payouts in the end?
AbeI think it was partly um the squeaky wheel gets oiled, and so we became we were determined to be the squeakiest wheel. As time went by, that created a bit of enmity in terms of how come everyone's talking about Murawai all the time and we've been forgotten. Um, and it was because Murawai was talking about Murawai, uh, and and we weren't going to be forgotten, but everything we were fighting for had to be uh applicable to every other community at in the same situation. So we were not asking for special treatment, we were asking for a solution that would fit everybody um who was affected by this disaster. Um but that was a really important thing in terms of the media cycle is so rapid, and that if we hadn't if if we had allowed ourselves to be swept up under the carpet and forgotten, it would have been so much more convenient and and cost effective uh for everyone to let that happen. Um, you know, I I would love to see a cost-benefit analysis of what happened to the families who had been bought out and are now functioning again, versus what happens to families who are left to fall through the cracks and disappear into poverty and disaster, um, and what the long-term costs to the community are of that. Because I think even though these the cost of these buyouts was immense and more than uh everybody thought it was going to be worth, I think the actual benefit to the to New Zealand of protecting its citizens and allowing helpful, productive people to continue to function and contribute is way higher. Um so you know that's that's that's I think there's got to be an awareness of that, that you know, we've got to help each other out rather than let each other, you know, let the market decide, which is what you hear from the other side, um, and which is the greatest nonsense in the world, because the insurance company washed their hands of the whole thing. They weren't interested in um equitable payouts for homeowners, they were interested in getting away with the bare minimum, and the the way that the council dealt with them probably allowed that to happen. So council got a fraction of what they could have got out of the insurance industry if they'd said, right, we're gonna create an interim insurer as they did in Christchurch, pull all of these contracts together and say, we're gonna now ask the um industry for this amount of money because we own these contracts and you're gonna help us out here. And um, so it got divided between council and government, but I think the third party who got waste got free pretty much was the insurance industry, and um and they need to be uh held to account in future. In the end, they're actually deciding to walk away from lots and lots of homeowners in New Zealand right now, and and that's pretty terrifying. Because if you can't insure a house, you can't get a mortgage on it and you can't sell it. So it um uh Kiwi's fundamental financial asset becomes worthless.
MandyCan you talk us through the eventual payout and and the process of of getting your payout for your house and then what you decided to do and where you went from there?
AbeSo the initial payout was not going to happen. They told us we were too C and that we were gonna have to live there, and they were gonna put up a mesh fence to catch a 10k boulder, uh uh like a uh a 10 meter boulder falling onto the back of our house, and that would save us somehow. And we said this is ridiculous. Um, and so what we had to do was uh get contrary opinions from geotechnical engineers rather than um geotechnical um consultants, um, because the engineers actually do the work and the consultants do the thinking, and um, but if the engineers say it can't be done, the consultants kind of can't count countermand them. And so the council was dealing with consultants and and we had to find engineers who would say, no, you can't do this within the the limit of of the cost, therefore this house should be tipped over into category three, which is the uh the buyout. And so that took us about several months to get to go and find uh several engineers who volunteered their time to come out and take a look at our place and to pull together a proposal, which we then took to council to say this is why your assessment of category two C or two P is wrong and uh we should be a three. So once they took a look at that and realised that we just were not gonna roll over and die, um, they said, Okay, you can be a three, and we um we understand why you know we've missed out five hundred thousand dollars worth of potential other costs in this in this remediation and the wire fence isn't gonna cut it. So um after that uh we had to get a valuation which we um just so we knew what the property was gonna be worth. The council got one too. The councils was really good um and we accepted it without any questions um because we had been insured, uh the the amount that the councils um took was five percent um plus what money we'd been paid by our insurers. And the hot like I said, the whole process was over and done in a year, and and actually once they'd worked out how it would work and what could happen, it was really fast and quite efficient. Um the the drama was that it happened in waves, so some people got news and others didn't, um, because they couldn't assess everything all at once, you know. It was an immense amount of skills and and effort that was required, and um, and so that created a real sense of of oh my god, like survivor guilt for a lot of people who who got a payout and then were started looking for in a house in a neighborhood or somewhere else, and other people who hadn't received a payout and thought, oh my god, we're never gonna get out of here, we're we're never gonna miss out, we're never gonna find anything. Um, so that was a that was kind of just human nature, I guess. But um in the end, um we got a payout, which was great, and we were renting up the road, so we stayed in the community, so the kids had continuity with all their friends and the school bus and things like that. And um, and then we started looking and looking and looking, and what we did was we looked really hard with a really, really cold calculus about what we would buy and what we would never touch. Because what we realized is that real estate agents selling us houses had no idea of what has happened to the New Zealand property market in terms of risk profiles, terms of floodplains, in terms of slips, in terms of um, you know, all sorts of calculus which are now being applied to properties. They were blindly um ignorant. of it and and so we would ask questions about you know what about um you know is is there a slip zone on this land or not and they just like have no idea so um it took us a long time to find a place but in the end we found a magnificent house which had never been on the market in 50 years and um contacted the owners and they were really happy to sell it to us uh and and we're now we've now got a place where all of our kids have got a bedroom and they feel like they're at home and that's the most wonderful thing.
MandyWere you thinking that you wanted to get out of Mirawai at that point?
AbeUm I loved Murawai. I love Murawai. Uh but we realised there'd be so many fewer places in Murawai to live to choose from. So we looked at every open home in Murawai um but when we applied the lens of is this house safe? Is this is this house defendable? Can this house be insured? Um do we feel comfortable living here? Um we decided that we would um look much further afield so the question became how much further and um and that was sort of like a debate between Maria and myself she was uh happy with something we're way further away and I just wasn't I'm gonna stay close because I love the beach.
MandyYeah.
AbeAnd emotionally tell us about how how this event affected you personally and and Maria your wife and and you two as a couple um so the first experience is one of complete and utter shock and and people react to shock differently um and so so that was really hard to navigate complete uncertainty the rug that the the home that you built the all the emotion that's embedded in that being taken away from you leaves you feeling really exposed uh how do I cook a meal for my kids if I don't have any pots and pans kind of feeling and um the then it was kind of um determination and and uh sheer willpower to kind of okay here's a result here's a bad situation what's the result we need how are we going to get it and and how can we how can we find people to help us who agree and need need a similar sort of thing and so that was that was um it's difficult being married to someone for 20 years you know things change and um but what I saw is the reason why I married her in the first place in terms of how she reacted to that whole event and um what and standing up and fighting really hard um for the for the um well being of the family and and and justice you know uh like a like a decent outcome and that I thought yeah okay that's who I married that was that's the woman I made a good choice.
MandyAnd because you don't always see eye to eye always sort of react differently when you're faced with trauma.
AbeEveryone's reactions were totally different and a lot of people it was a bit like COVID lockdown. A lot of marriages went to the wall in that because people found themselves trapped in a house with someone that they'd either lost touch with or didn't like anymore or couldn't didn't just just didn't share the same opinions. And I think there were a lot of um couples who didn't share this the desired outcome and and that was really hard for them in terms of like trying to people who wanted to stay, people wanted to leave and reasons why and um and a lot of sad stories around relationships that um uh exploded you know just just got fell victim to the to the trauma you know a lot a lot of good people got hurt and continue to be really hurt as a result of what happened. And that's the kind of immense emotional tale of this kind of thing.
MandyHave those feelings changed over time do you think?
AbeSo about a fortnight after Cycling Gabriel I went to a K Tempest concert at the power station and just wept uh you know and just just like literally wept because it was just a huge release. The music was just this moment to get a huge amount out of my system and and that was really important and allowed me to kind of ground myself for then what had to be done in order to get things right again. I think I've got a lot more empathy for you know everybody sees floods hears about slips um and and you realise the immense anguish that's going to be surrounding all of those people and the communities they live in and the landscapes they loved getting really horribly harmed. And part of that part of that process for Miraway was also engaging with the um the Manafenoah and actually getting to bless the place um afterwards and and and reintegrate their relationship with this community which had never been particularly strong. We'd kinda been an island in some ways and um so yeah in terms of the emotional arc I feel really lucky I feel incredibly lucky um that that we came out of it so well that that we were surrounded by the people we were surrounded by that it's it's worked out okay for the time being yeah how about your kids um I don't know you know I think this is something that they'll carry with them for the rest of their lives and they'll deal with independently um Alba my daughter was immensely emotionally impacted initially my eldest son who was there uh on the night um it just kind of water off a duck's back for him the the two younger kids the our youngest son was probably most affected in terms of having his house just you leave it one night in the storm and you never go back kind of thing um and so it's hard to know what effect that'll have on them um in the long term but you got it's gotta be it's gonna have some kind of deep impact on them that sense of fragility around things that you've always considered to be forever. Yeah.
MandyBut it will also teach them really good positive things like resilience and determination and other values.
AbeAnd and that was also part of um what we consciously talk to the kids about through the whole process is that this is really hard, this is really difficult but it's gonna be okay and we're gonna make it all right and and and you know life goes on.
MandyYeah and just identifying that you're all okay like we we're the lucky ones no one's been hurt. Yeah and getting kids to understand the fragility of life and and appreciating what you have.
AbeRespect for for um the power of nature uh you know an understanding of it and and also a healthy sense of self-preservation but the good news was that our cat came through okay he uh we ended up getting him the next day and he survived and um and that was we were really lucky in that regard because a lot of people lost pets yeah and that would really hurt them as well. So one of them one of the really important things that came out of this was the fact that we stayed in the community meant that we were surrounded by people who understood what we'd gone through and could try and help us was what I heard from a lot of some people who had left the community because they just couldn't deal with what happened is that they found themselves in environments where they surround were surrounded by people who had no idea and couldn't get it and they just felt kind of like um fish out of water. So I think staying here was probably a really good thing for actually processing the whole thing and coming out the other side. And and um yeah I can't speak for other experiences but I know a lot of people um who did move away or were forced to move away because they had no choice felt really really discombobulated and had no idea um where were they supposed to be what was going on you know where am I going to see my stuff how do I piece my life back together if I'm suddenly in South Auckland when I've been used to living in West Auckland. Hurricane storm in 2018 and um because we were out of power for seven days which had been the longest time ever we'd we'd been used to you you know at that at that point if you don't have a generator the fridge is getting really manky and horrible and a huge amount of uh food is going to waste in a freezer potentially so we had learnt to um take those precautions before Cycle and Gabriel happened and we've taken those precautions with us to our new house as well. So one of the conscious things we looked at when we were buying was can new gravity um feed the water to it to flush the toilets if there's no power and uh and all of those sorts of things. Is there enough room to have a garden to grow stuff? And so yeah we've become we've become way more um self-reliant hopefully what's something meaningful you'd like to leave us with Abe Don't believe the hype the the um the the the market will not save you it's people that'll get you through it's the people next to you who will be your saviours and know their names be open to helping and and open to being helped and that's the most important thing that's that's where the future lies Precipice was commissioned and funded by Mudawai Community Association supported by the Auckland Council Recovery Office At work by Taylor Williams soundtrack by local Midawai band Tin People written in response to Cyclone Gabrielle Namhi thank you to the Midawai community for their input and bravery and for sharing their stories and thank you for listening
