Precipice
Stories of landslides and community restoration in Muriwai New Zealand following the devastating 13 February 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle.
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Precipice
Devastation on Domain: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai. Ep. 6 Precipice Podcast.
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Elaine McKnee, Charlotte Reynolds and Jessica McDonald have come together to join me in this episode, as they lived near each other in Domain Crescent and also worked together closely in the recovery period after the cyclone.
We talk about the “Disaster Tours” created as a way to communicate local issues with MPs, councillors and media, creating the Restore Muriwai Instagram account as a means of communication to the community and beyond, temporary accommodation problems and stresses, looting of unoccupied houses and community reactions to the displaced people in need.
Elaine shares tips for approaching and dealing with politicians and councillors, we discuss the projects that have evolved out of Restore Muriwai including Neighbourhood Net and the Emergency Plan project and the ways Cyclone Gabrielle has affected them all.
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
Listen on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/@precipicepodcast
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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 Muturawai 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 Muturawai 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 Muduay find a way forward. Welcome to Precipice. Elaine McKnee, Charlotte Reynolds and Jessica McDonald have come together to join me in this episode as they lived near each other in Domain Crescent and also worked together closely in the recovery period after the cyclone. We talk about the disaster tours created as a way to communicate local issues.
SPEAKER_00One of the tours I remember really vividly was having Carmo Sepolloni, who is one of our local MPs, not our immediate MP, but our local one, come and stand at the back of my house. And when you're standing on top of a huge amount of mud with Purtakawa trunks and macrocarpa trunks and twisted metal and broken glass, and you're standing there talking about the impact and literally the your daughter's teddy bear is hanging out the broken window. Um it's paints a really vivid picture of how this event had broke up so many lives.
MandyCreating the Restore Murrui Instagram account as a means of communication to the community and beyond.
SPEAKER_04We were posting people's stories. There was a bit on there about people's specific houses and what that looked like and pictures of that, pictures of around the community, especially at the time that it was still corded off and people couldn't get in. We shared lots of pictures of what it looked like and why people couldn't get in.
MandyWe talk about temporary accommodation problems and stresses, looting of unoccupied houses, and community reactions to the displaced people in need. Elaine shares tips for approaching and dealing with politicians and counsellors. They're not these big scary beasts that are trying to do gotcha moments all the time. They're actually just people. We discuss the projects that have evolved out of Restore Murrui, including Neighborhood Net and the Emergency Plan Project, and the way Cyclone Gabrielle has affected them all. I feel like it's a bit of a wild ride.
SPEAKER_04You kind of feel like it's over and you're done and you process it all, and then something happens which kind of throws you again, or somebody mentions it and you kind of well up and you're like, Oh, where did that come from?
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of emotion tied up in the place that I probably haven't uh dealt with. Um but it's one of those things when people talk about resilience and you get through a situation and life carries on, and it does carry on because that's the way that we go.
SPEAKER_02We are now in this new world, like we know that we're in this new world of climate change. We've experienced it, we've been harmed by it, yeah, humbled by it. Now we're a voice for it, you know, and and people sadly won't understand climate change until it hits you, and they won't care about it until it hits you, and it hit us hard. And as a result, it kind of feels an amazing privilege to actually be a voice for it now and to help other communities because as we say to people, no one is safe now, no one, no one's house anywhere in New Zealand is safe. So can we start with you, please, Elaine? Cura. My name is Elaine McNee, and I have been living at Muri for just over 20 years. Uh so I'm from Scotland originally, as you can probably tell. Um, I remember coming out to Murawai on my second weekend of arriving in New Zealand, and just thought, oh wow, if there's one place that you could stay and commute into a city to work, this would be it. So that was it. Just second weekend of arriving.
MandyYou and your partner Andy live in Domain Crescent, um, and you spent quite a period out of your home.
SPEAKER_02Yes, we did. So probably it was uh more than well, more than four months out of Muriwai, and then it was I think seven and a half months or seven months out of our house.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Morena, I'm Charlotte. I've been out at Muruay now for also about 20 years. Uh I came to live out here um with my partner, and his family had been out here since 1972, so long-term residents of this beautiful place. Yeah, the events of Gabrielle have been fairly full on uh to say the least for us. Uh our house was demolished on the night of the cyclone, and when I say demolished I mean mud and trees, etc., through the middle of it, so it has been uninhabitable since that night.
SPEAKER_04I am Jessica MacDonald and I moved out here with my parents 24 years ago, and I've lived out here on and off over those 24 years. I lived in Domain Crescent. My house uh was fine. There was a slip behind my house which went into my neighbour's house, but it was deemed that my house was unsafe. Never returned. Moved back home again.
MandyAnd your house was demolished? Yes. We've put you three together on the same episode for a reason, and that is because you worked very closely in the recovery time together. Elaine, could you talk to us about how you found each other and then what were the first things that you initiated?
SPEAKER_02Uh how we came together at the beginning was because Charlotte uh helped to put together a WhatsApp group for the Domain Crescent people. And also Motatara, there were separate groups, aye. Um and so it was Charlotte trying to connect everybody sort of instantly in one group. Um and I had kinda I remember checking in with Jess because we kind of knew each other through your cat, who tried to move into my house when Jess just had moved to Domain Crescent. Um and I was like, you know, how how you doing, and you were staying at your mum and dad's place with the two cats in the bathroom. Um and then I remember coming down from Andy and I were staying at one of his sisters' places and I drove the two hours down to a community meeting and Charlotte was at one of the community meetings.
MandyAnd you were telling me earlier that a big part of of your learning was the way communities and people within a community connect at a time of crisis.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Um Andy and I actually had this instant or instant reaction to stuff because actually, just to kind of step back a bit, I actually wasn't at Muraway on the night of the cyclone, my best friend had flown over from Scotland two days before to have a holiday of a lifetime with me. And so we set off on the Saturday, she just flew in on the Friday, and we set off on the Saturday morning to drive down to Hahe. And I remember driving down to Hahe because the cyclone was actually hitting there first. And when I was driving down on the Saturday afternoon, my friend was chirping away in the car all excited, and I remember just seeing the trees and the wind, and it was really kind of scary. And I was driving this windy road because State Highway 25 had already been cut off two weekends before with the you know the flooding. And I remember just thinking, What have I done? We're driving to this tiny little beach place. I just think, oh my god, it was just it was just awful. I had this real horrible feeling in my stomach, and then we arrived at the beach, and I have never seen an east coast beach in New Zealand look like this. It was honestly, it was like 16-meter waves as far as the eye could see. And my friend ran down to the beach because she was so excited and the wind just blew her over. And I remember just thinking, oh my god, what have what have I done? And Hahe was evacuated. Um, and actually, we didn't get back to Murawai, well, back to Auckland for five days because the roads were cut off. So Andy and I were completely separated for those five days as well. And there's a bit more trauma involved in that because I actually thought he was dead at one point. Um, that was pretty horrendous. Um, just remember the phone, like the comms went down in Hae, and there was no power. There was no power from the Sunday. So Sunday happened, Monday happened, Tuesday morning happened, and we were at the Hahe campground, and someone said, Oh look, we've got Wi-Fi, but I couldn't get through on Wi-Fi. And then I remember just seeing two cars at the beach at the toilet block and pulling out their phones. And I went, Oh my god, the phone, the the phones have gone up, I can I can check in. And I only had about 16% left on my phone. And this the text messages that were coming in, I was like, What what the hell has happened? What the hell has happened? And I remember just ringing a friend at Murawai who's really linear, really clinical. I was like, I've got 16% left on my phone, I know who to ring. And then they just started off with oh, so you don't know what's happened, you don't know what's happened, two people have died. And I thought they were actually trying to tell me that it was Andy that had um yeah, so uh so drive so coming back, yeah, driving back from Ahahi to well, not to Mirawai, because it was into Auckland because you couldn't drive to Mirawai. Um I just it just honestly it felt so apo apocalyptic. The roads were utterly destroyed, you know. There was there was just big cracks in the middle of the road, there was landslide, like you could see that landslides had been cleared. I remember it was like two days after the cyclone, and I thought, oh, we'll walk to Cathedral Cove because my friend is here for a holiday of a lifetime. And just to see a whole road like crumpled, like that was all cut off. You couldn't even go because of the the road where the buses parked and everything had just all crumbled away. It was it almost felt like there had been like a sort of earthquake eruption up through the roads. It was just never never seen anything like it. Um so it was a very slow drive back to Auckland. It probably took us about, I don't know, six and a half hours to just get back from Ha Hay to Auckland. Yeah. Um, and then just trying to compute what had happened when you're driving back up, because you could start seeing all this devastation, and then you started going, what the hell is Murawai gonna look like? If there's been landslides at Murawai and people have died, what is it gonna look like? And I remember Andy, my partner, saying, Don't look at the media, don't look at anything, don't don't look at anything whilst you're away. Like you have to see it to kind of believe it, but don't don't look at anything until you're back up the road. Yeah. And um Yeah, and I think that's what I know. I'm kind of skipping forward, but I think that's what was amazing, what you did, Charlotte, with doing like the disaster tours, because we kind of coined it to make it, you know, palatable. But even people that were working to try and, you know, provide, you know, to give, you know, to look after our needs, so you know, like the government and the council and council workers and local MPs, but for them to actually see it with their own eyes, they every single one of them said, I've seen this in the media, I know I live 20 minutes away, but to actually come into the community and see it with your own eyes, it is you just it's it's unfathomable what you're looking at. Um, and I think that's you know, that's something I kind of felt when you're roaming around Auckland City and you're not wanting anyone to like be living in such devastation as kind of we were. But there were some parts of you that were screaming inside because it was like, oh, you can go about and have your nice dinners at Prego, and that's fine because you should, and you should be able to go to the supermarket, and but you know, just literally 20 minutes along the road from you as a whole devastated community, yeah. It was just it was this real kind of jarring feeling because if you actually just kind of came out and looked at it, and at the same time, they weren't allowed to come out and look at it because we also became a bit of a target as a community for a bit because everyone thought that we were telling everyone to stay away because we were in this mourning and you know, there was this devastation and they can't come in. But actually, the really annoying thing was it was this completely dumb thing, which it's not dumb, but you know, there was not enough toilets. The toilets weren't working in a national park for the public to come, so it was a health and safety. But Murawai as a as a community were being targeted on Facebook, you know, like this isn't your beach, you don't own this national park, which kind of like added this other layer to it. When we were wanting to say it's got nothing to do with us, it's actually a health and safety thing from the council because it's not enough toilets to um put up with the demand because the toilets aren't working properly because of the water situation. And and at that point as well, that was kind of a little bit annoying because you think the council could have said that on a Facebook post. I know I'm completely digressing. Yeah, I mean, look, you've got every emotion under the sun inside your body, like day in, day out, and you also have to get a bit of anger out. Um, and I do remember when the regional park was opened to the public. I remember just, you know, because we could only drive up, you still couldn't exit Muraway out of Motatara Road. You had to go up Waitia and then along Constable. And I remember just it I mean, someone in the community went, it's almost like busloads are up there on a wire road, like looking down and gawking and trying to see where the landslides happened. And and that's above your house, Charlotte. I mean, I don't know how it was bad enough it not being your house that people were looking down on. But that was a good way of kind of getting rage out of your system. It was kind of like the gawkers are coming out, and that was like it felt like a kind of well in Scotland you call it a kind of poverty safari, but it felt like a disaster safari for a bit, for a good month, it just felt like Murawai was this disaster safari for people, and that oh that was pretty awful.
MandyThey weren't allowed. I mean, that was it was cordoned off, and so people couldn't come in, but they still couldn't access from the top of the cliff.
SPEAKER_02But this is when they could also come in as well, like people were stopping and you know, because everyone wanted to see, and you know, I mean you could argue that that's because you know they also felt connected to it because they love this place. So it's just you know, when you're in a pretty dark place, it's kind of kind of fucked you off a bit.
MandyYeah, and it feels so personal because you know, it's not just a thing that's happened, it's everybody's lives.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it was just because we were kind of shot on a bit, you know, initially, and then it was like, oh no, but now you want to come out and gawk, but you were quite happy to kind of shit on us at the time as well.
MandySo it was just a bit like And what was that, some of that negativity?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh because everyone not necessarily well, not necessarily everyone agrees with uh, you know, people are given stuff when they're in need, you know, it's that kind of like what why are they getting something that we're not getting? You know? Um so there was a bit of that, I think, because we were in the news and because as a community, because as we sort of said, it was incredibly unfortunate that so many people were impacted at Murawai, but it but when you flipped that, it did give us a larger voice to advocate for our community and other communities that had been devastated, which is what we did. We all connected. Um, we were quite prevalent in the news. Um, and I think it's just that aspect of when they see that people in need are given stuff that they need. Some people are like, Well, I'm not getting that, so I don't agree with that. Yeah. There's all these layers upon layers upon layers.
MandySo, Charlotte, can you talk to us a little bit about how you all came together, the the three of you, and um and what you created?
SPEAKER_00Sure. So there was a a group of um amazing women that got together to kind of work out how do you progress? Like we were all in states of trauma, um, people in in different stages. Obviously, there was people that had lost their dear ones and people that had lost homes, which are replaceable, but it's it's pretty tough at the time, and people that were losing their community around them. So what we were trying to work out was is there a roadmap to kind of get out of this? And the first thing obviously that we needed to connect on was the people. Um, and so we started really simply with lists of who lived in the houses. Um, so we would go up a street and go number three, number five, number seven, number nine. Um, there's three kids in here, there's two cats that need to be looked after. Um, they've gone to the city, these ones are on at grandma and grandpa's, just to find out really who who was around in the in the area or not in the area. Um, and then kind of just trying to work out on what people needed. And I'm not sure that any of us knew kind of how to progress. So having the wider support of the group was was pretty amazing because people brought in different skills. So we had people who had a lot of legal skills. So obviously you started talking legal stuff at the start, and how did you talk to the council and what were you talking to the council about, and engineers, and then that kind of moved into people that had um political knowledge as well. So, could we get some support from government? What what kind of support were we after? So it was really helpful to kind of put those uh layers of people together and then to come up with some ideas, and that's where our working group started, um, and it just got stronger and stronger.
SPEAKER_02I I remember the group that you that Middleware had put together said, okay, let's meet on a Tuesday night. And that's when I drove down that time, and that was a tiny group. Like I think there was about seven of us sitting at that table, and then it was just you know, people putting their hands up, going, Oh, I could do that. I remember remember you saying, You've worked in a political party, Elaine, you know politics. So yeah. Um, and so that's kind of how the political lobbying started kind of coming into play. And it was it was just everyone had skills to offer, you know, and that's when Jess kicked in with the social media because we were trying to work out who could do the social media. And Jess put her hand up.
MandyYou actually started an Instagram account for Restore Muriwai. Yes. Can you talk to us about that?
SPEAKER_04And so the idea of that Instagram account for Restore Muriwai was to get our stories and our voice out to a wider audience, like not just ourselves, to get them out to the pol politicians and the government, and you know, just so people knew that we were still going through it. There's still lots of stuff going on and we weren't back in our houses and yeah.
MandyAnd what kind of things were you posting? What were you doing to kind of bring the community together, but also to communicate outside the community? What kind of posts?
SPEAKER_04Uh we were posting people's stories. There was a bit on there about people's specific houses and what that looked like and pictures of that, pictures of around the community, especially at the time that it was still cordoned off and people couldn't get in. We shared lots of pictures of what it looked like and why people couldn't get in. And then how did we share? The animals. The animals, yeah. The animals that got kind of left behind, you know, that had to be rescued. And I started at the end I started uh sharing all the houses that were being deconstructed. Just because there were so many houses deconstructed.
MandyAnd you had quite regular stories happening so that the community at least felt like they were sort of aware of what was going on and and it was almost like you were kind of lobbying to bring people together to sort of fight the big fight.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. And there we shared a lot of um the ongoing issues of like, you know, there was a lot of rain afterwards and there was still lots of flooding and, you know, the land was still moving and stuff, and so we shared a lot of that as well. Just to show people that it was still going on.
MandyYeah. And were you really mindful of making sure that you were regularly posting just to sort of keep that keep that continuity?
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah. I mean, yeah, there was so much to post about.
MandyIt was just lots of content. In times of disaster, you know, people either shine, it can shine, and and can come through brilliantly, but then sometimes there is a negative side um and people respond in a way that you wouldn't expect. What did you see of that, Charlotte?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, one of the things that was really upsetting for us, um our house had a a metal fence in front of it, which um meant that no one was supposed to be in the property and numerous times people were caught in the property looting, um, taking things out of the house when I wasn't allowed to be in the house because it was red stickered. Uh that was pretty disappointing seeing people coming out of my place with their backpack full of my stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah no so it was really interesting, you know, as you were saying about how people deal with things differently and the community that weren't you know experiencing what the people out of their houses were experiencing. You know, there was huge parts of the community that were amazing and you know opened whatever they had sleep outs they had you know Airbnb's it was like please come and stay for nothing and when it was you know becoming really apparent that it wasn't going to be one month or two months or three months it was creeping up and then it was like oh we can give you you know really deducted rate kind of thing you know like rental rate and then there was the flip side of that where some people in the community kind of capitalized on the fact that there wasn't a lot of property and there was people that had you know their kids at the local school needed to stay in the area. And me and my partner were really conscious of that. Like we didn't put our hand up immediately because you know for accommodation because we knew that there was people with kids at the local school and they should come first rather than uprooting a whole family and a whole educational education system. And so we kind of you know waited in a in a sort of an imaginary QR head um until Abe actually was like Elaine put your hand up and so were you Charlotte you kept going there's a sleep out for you and Andy and and we were really grateful for that. But there was also the flip side of some people really capitalising on the housing stock being really low and so some people were paying through the absolute nose on rental and at the same time which is I was even talking to a colleague at work yesterday that people didn't realise that we were having to pay our mortgage and rental that that rental accommodation supplement came in I think it was in June July like four months five months after we were all out of our houses and we were having to pay mortgages and rental and for those people that were paying rental through the nose and mortgage through the rose through the nose I just don't know how they got through the day even managing to put food on the table. I mean that stress of a mortgage alone and then as Caroline put it oh they offered you a mortgage holiday it's like the shittiest holiday under the sun because it's not a holiday it's um interest shoved onto your mortgage further down the the track and so people weren't just emotionally crippled they were actually financially crippled they were actually I remember saying to a lot of people in the community we're on our fucking knees can you please help us there was a lot of people in the community sort of had the and it's not it's not a criticism because a lot of people just thought it's their business they're all clubbing together you know they're they're all managing together but there was a lot of feeling from us as well going like can you just give us a hand up we were actually on our knees and I remember somebody sort of there was a council meeting coming up and someone flippantly said to me oh whilst you're talking to the council about your houses do you want to sort of talk to them about the water care issue that we're having and I was just like like we're just trying to actually advocate to have a roof over our heads I don't really kind of care about your water situation in your house but if you want to advocate for that then there's a community meeting come down and talk to the council yourself. So it was almost like you know some people saw us as this kind of advocacy group for the whole community when we were actually just advocating to try and get a roof over our heads to live in because we weren't able to live in our own houses. Because I remember like when my mum died in Scotland and I it was the kind of first parent of my friends to die. And I remember um sort of flying back and like no one went near me and my brother for the whole week they just kept going I hope you're reaching I hope you and it was just like no we're not like we're not we don't even know how to go to the supermarket we don't even know how to put like a spoon in our mouth you know and I remember straight after the funeral I had a couple of whiskies probably had some whiskies beforehand to be honest um and I just remember going right listen up everybody here's grief 101 when someone dies like this is what you should do and they were like okay and it was only because they just didn't know they hadn't experienced it and I remember feeling like that when we kind of were all on our knees it was it was just after the cyclone after the cyclone yeah um you know you it was the people that were you know in the same boat so to speak you know the people that had nothing that were giving you everything you'd pop into each other's houses it was always a cup of tea I remember I got locked out and Charlotte was like just the doors open come to mine bring your computer sit down I'm gonna head out and you know like people gave you a jumper when you didn't have a jumper and you know gave you a cup of tea but then there was a whole part of the community that kind of like gave you nothing you'd pop round to people's houses and it wouldn't even be like how are you and I remember feeling like that was just so hurtful and I understand that they probably didn't know what to say but you just have to say something and you can just ask somebody how they're doing actually as Charlotte said we've we've been told not to ask people like how are they it's like how are you right now how's your morning been like chunk it down into something tiny. Don't go how are you big wide philosophical question but just how's your morning been you know how's your night been or you know how how you kind of feeling today and there was a lot of that not happening and that did feel really hurtful. Do you think there was a big divide between the people who lost everything and then the people who were okay I think there was I think there was a conscious decision from some people that they felt really guilty that they were back in their houses there was some of that conversation happening um and I didn't understand that. I mean here's me not experiencing that and then I understood that when I was one of the incredibly lucky ones to move back into my house when I never ever thought in a million years that we would and I remember just and I still feel that guilt you know um especially Jess and I know Jess always says don't bring it up you know it's I it's not to feel guilty but Jess lived right across the road from us in the little blue house and there is not one morning that goes by that I don't look out my bathroom window and see that it's gone Jess I make sure I do it every morning because I just want to acknowledge you know you'd just moved in you know you'd only been there what a year and a half a year yeah and you did it was like Andy always commented on all the beautiful things that you were doing to that house he was just like Jess has got such an amazing eye you know like how you just you know you did your little decking and your planting and you know it was just such a it was this little blue batch that you totally that you just made so special do you have in regards to you know how to treat people who have lost everything it's really hard it's really it's really hard like what do you say like what do you say but just try and say something just try and say something even if it's really awkward or if you say I I know I'm gonna put my foot in it here but I just want to really say I'm so you know like I I just I see you like you know I've got no idea what you're feeling but I know that you're gonna be feeling so much. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Can you talk to us a little bit Charlotte about some of the other things that you did as a group to get stuff done in the community one of the really effective things we had going was what we uh termed the disaster tours and uh that's obviously some of the black humour coming through that uh got us got us through a lot of this event. Uh but we were very fortunate to have a number of political um figures come and support us and one of the tours I remember really vividly was having um Carmel Seppelloni who is one of our local MPs, not our immediate MP but our local one come and stand at the back of my house and when you're standing on top of a huge amount of mud with Putawa trunks and microcarpa trunks and twisted metal and broken glass and you're standing there talking about the impact and literally the your daughter's teddy bear is hanging out the broken window it's paints a really vivid picture of how this event had broke up so many lives. And having the support of someone like Carmel really helped form some policy that hopefully going forward makes some changes.
SPEAKER_02There's elements that you can control to a degree and there's other elements that you can't so just kind of connecting and you know you might not get to the right person. So for example you know with the with the politicians we didn't necessarily start we started with our local MP Chris Penck who was in opposition at the time he was national well still is national and obviously you can only do so much as an oppositional MP and so that's not necessarily the right route to go down because they're out you know they're in parliament but they're out of power so to speak and and so you come across just kind of keep asking questions who else can you speak to you know you might come across a few dads like we we connected with West Auckland's flooding that was the first connection that we made with another group and we kind of began to realise that their local MP was was quite interesting. She was very very helpful but um we kind of noticed you kind of pick up cues in a meeting and because we weren't dealing with quote unquote soggy carpets um well we were only dealing with soggy carpets sorry whilst people in West Auckland were dealing with their whole houses being flooded it kind of felt like there was a bit of you know they don't have their shirt on their back but you have a nice house at the beach so you're still a little bit better off than them and that's because that's a local MP looking after that area and the specific needs in that area so we kind of started to sort of realize that whilst we can join with all these other groups they've all got different issues happening and what we've got as well is different issues. So then you're just trying to kind of connect the issue with kind of right people and so the first one was kind of Carmel Seppelloni through Deborah Russell who was Labour and that was to lobby for the accommodation supplement because both Deborah and Carmel themselves had suffered um issues with their own houses and so there was a that was a kind of easy start because they've also gone through you know disaster so there's a there's a definite empathy there and you know real lived experience and you can't beat that when it comes to any politician. And then I had connections with James Shaw who was our climate change minister and he we reached out to him and he was incredible because he sort of said I'm going to bring up policy people that sit in Wellington behind a desk. It's really important that they come up here and they see what's happened at Muraway they've been to I've pulled them out of their desks and I've taken taken them to the Hawks Bay and to Gisburn it's really important that they see what's happened up here because these are the people that are helping to form policy so it's really great that their eyes are opened and see how people are living their life and so and it was the same with the council like there wasn't the all these agencies and organisations were trying to help and they knew that there was a need but it really wasn't until they came to your doorstep to understand how that need was being accepted and used that's when the kind of dots started to be joined you can make all these decisions at your desk but when you come to the door and when you actually sit at a kitchen table with a group of people which Linda did Linda Greenaulch from Auckland Council that was a real watershed moment because she came to Maria's house she took off her shoes she sat down at the kitchen table and she even offered to go up and make the cup of tea in Maria's house just that simple act of I'm going to sit down at the table and see how this need is being received and is it the right need to provide was incredible because it was the first person that had done that really James Shaw Carmel and Linda really coming out and trying to really try to walk in your shoes was was really important. Yeah.
MandyAnd you come from a sort of lobby lobbying government background in your in your job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah can you sort of talk to us about how you actually make those connections with people because that feels so big and so sort of unattainable for lots of people I'd say um I come from a comms background as a journalist I started off actually as a sports journalist and then moved into the dark side of PR and then I've moved into campaigning for animal welfare so it's to change animal welfare legislation at um council and government level and it is very daunting and you do tell people look at the end of the day people are people they're still people journalists are still people they're not these big scary beasts that are trying to do gotcha moments all the time they're actually just people and they you know the jobs that they go into like it's a public service they're actually they've given themselves to public service so that's a very good start to not be terrified about because they actually care. So regardless of where you're sitting on the political spectrum you are handing your life over to public service. So they are actually wanting to look after the public so that's a really good thing to kind of keep in your head that these people aren't you know these scary you know kind of beasts that you know are going to terrify the hell out of you. They actually do want to try and help you. So if so everyone's got limitations agencies have got their limitations and you know like Ministry of social development as Carmel explained is that you have to draw this big box round everybody's needs and you have to capture all those needs as much as possible but there's always going to be these other very unique side you know unique needs outside of that box and that's what agencies all our government agencies do is that they're trying to capture the biggest and most needs but they understand it is a very blunt tool and there'll always be these needs outside of that big box. And it's not that they don't care about those needs they certainly do but they have limitations because they're using taxpayers' money and ratepayers' money which is highly scrutinized which it should be because no you know every dollar should go as far as it can go and and they're very very careful of that and as a result when when you're in need when you're at the other side of being in need you can think that those processes go really slow but there's checks and balances in place for a really good reason because they could get pulled over the coals at any point in time going why did you hand over three billion to a beach community of our money our taxpayers' money why did they get you know it wasn't three billion by the way but you know those checks and balances are in place so that was really good like I'd um I'd kind of taken this job at government actually at the Department of Internal Affairs uh about gosh it would have been a year before the cyclone and I just did want to I took the job because I wanted to see how a government department did work after many years of lobbying government departments. And I quickly realized within about three months I started really appreciating what they did and why they did it and how they did it. And I also saw a government agency what they considered moving fast but I understood it was actually them moving fast because he had all these checks and balances to get through. So yeah I think just coming from that place of everyone's got limitations, every agency's got limitations but where we had a really good conversation with Linda at the council and she you know she was absolutely on the same page you know any community that goes through this in the future the first conversation you should have with anybody that is part of any of these government organisations or council organizations or charities that want to help you is you tell me your limitations I'll tell you my limitations and then let's meet in the middle and start talking there about what we can start doing for each other. Like let's just be honest about our limitations.
MandyAnd how did you actually identify the people that you needed to speak with and how did you actually like literally reach them? Was it by email or phone?
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah yeah so um and that's a great so New Zealand is actually um New Zealand is an incredible democratic country and we do have incredible access to our politicians and lots of people don't realise that because you just think oh that's parliament that's got nothing to do with me but actually we are the ones that put these elected officials in that building and a lot of them of course don't want you to contact them but lots of them do because they are actually there to advocate for you and so again that's a really good starting point. And I mean when I started doing it in my job I was like utterly terrified you go my God I remember like probably spending about 20 minutes one time just staring at the send button going do I send this email do I send this email like oh god what's going to happen at the other end and they actually have to respond to you you know they do have to respond to you and they need to hear from you because that is how policy is changed is through the people it's not you know let everyone thinks oh it's just a political party coming up with policies because that's their brand they're not they're trying to answer to needs within the community that's that's what they're there for.
MandySo and did you find having a group a sort of collective voice helpful?
SPEAKER_02Oh absolutely yeah yeah because it was there was so many people in need like if you're just one person asking for something it's like we'll get to the back of the queue you know there was such a dire need you know within the community and lots of people had then different needs within that kind of basket of dire needs um and you know that's m what Maria did really well with her um she came out with you know she used used great kind of quantitative always get mixed up between quantitative and qualitative Maria will tell you um but it was like what like try and capture all those needs like what's the kind of top line needs and then what's the needs in those kind of baskets and then that's what we sort of put forward in you know Maria put forward in a very kind of factual way of you know there's people need an accommodation supplement there's people needing this there's people actually just needing food you know da da da da da um and that is a very clear picture for politicians they can use that they need data to make any changes you know anecdotal stuff that's not only going to get you so far like but if they've got the hard facts then they can act on that and they will act on it. Can you talk us through the accommodation support that you got from the government yeah so that was again through uh so Maria got you know like again did a survey to ask the community what was you know are they paying a mortgage is a um I might have the facts wrong Maria can walk you through it but like what's the kind of threshold that you're paying um and again so that was the kind of getting the data to then inform policy because that's what you need to do. And so that you know even Carmel Seppelloni and Deborah Russell both said you know that's fantastic because that's something that then we can go and talk to our policy people with um which will inform policy which it did. So and again look we're really lucky with the government don't want to get political on it but we're really lucky with the government it was an election year but we were with a government that does believe in the social safety net yeah yeah yeah yeah um and part of what you know we always talked about when we were going through this is that we didn't want anyone to experience this in another community even though that they will so something I've always done in my campaigning jobs is in an election year you ask um all the political parties are set questions on an issue and so we chose obviously disaster management and we asked political parties like what would they do in a disaster like do they agree that insurance companies should pay out do I've kind of forgotten the questions now and then you make it like a political scorecard and Labour and the Greens are the only party that believe in a social safety net when it comes to disaster management and all the rest just believe in manage retreat and uh help yourself.
MandyWe spoke about Restore Miraway earlier which you were all involved with. Could you talk to us Jess about how that has evolved and moving into the sort of projects as part of the recovery and then talk about neighbourhood net for us.
SPEAKER_04Yeah absolutely um so we started off with Restore Miraway and then we kind of moved into the projects so we had I think there were seven projects in total um to kind of build on the connection within the community that had happened over the course of the cyclone. So an example one of those is uh neighborhood net so it became uh we became aware that during the cyclone it was really important to Connected with your neighbours to check in on them, make sure they're alright, and vice versa. And so one of the projects was Neighborhood Net, and that is about creating uh connections with your immediate neighbours. So everybody has like a little net within their neighborhood. So in the next emergency, they can be connected quickly, they know where to go, they can check in on elderly or people that are immobile. And it's just kind of building on that connection, not necessarily being connected all the time, because some people don't want to be connected all the time, but just in an emergency, we can kind of mobilize the community quite quickly.
MandyYeah, and that feels like that's a sort of evolution of the spreadsheet work that you did, you know, just after the cyclone of gathering information. Does the neighbourhood net work in sort of small sh sections around the community and and what is the sort of main way that you expect people to communicate within that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so it's um we've created WhatsApp groups within the community and it's kind of 10 houses around you in your immediate area, just so that there's not it it's not meant to be a source of like continuous information. It's just getting emergency information out quickly. I mean, the the neighbor nets are welcome to use it however they want, really, but it's just for an emergencies and just a small group of people.
MandyAnd you've got nominated or volunteered sort of leaders of each small group, is that right?
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah. So there's the there's coordinators that manage the whole project, and then each little net has its own coordinator that kind of makes sure everybody's in their net, you know, finds their name, their contact details, maybe if the house is rented out, who it's rented to, if it's an Airbnb, if there's nobody there. And that becomes quite crucial if there's an when then when there's another emergency, if a house is empty, like it's good for the res for the civil responders. Yeah, to know that that house is empty, they don't need to waste time going in there to find nobody. Yeah. So it's getting that information to them quickly as well.
MandyAnd um your communication role has has evolved also with Midwai Community Association. And I did notice that the last storm that was predicted, there was quite a lot of communication within the community through Facebook and other channels from Midwai Community Association. So could you talk to us a little bit about how that has come about and what you're hoping to achieve?
SPEAKER_04So one of the other projects is the emergency plan project. So there's a couple of locals that have put together an emergency plan booklet that we can share with the community so people know where to go, what to do in an emergency. And part of that is also getting the comms out to people from the higher powers. And so that last cyclone was a good practice run for getting that information out, kind of getting it down the line to the community. And so my role is to get that information from the official people and then share it with the community. And it kind of it was a good test run to show that the system actually really works.
MandyYeah, it really does. And is Facebook your main means of communication?
SPEAKER_04Yes, for the wider community, and then so I share the information with the neighbor net coordinators who then share it with their nets, and then for people that aren't on WhatsApp, it's also on Facebook. So we've kind of covered two mediums so we can get to the people that don't want to be part of the neighbor net program.
SPEAKER_02I I remember saying, you know, like we were talking about this. So so you move to Murawai for lots of different reasons. But one of the reasons why a lot of people move to Murawai is because of its incredible beauty, and you know, you're at the coast and you're in this beautiful, isolated kind of uh you know, beach town, so to speak. Um and so it felt really cruel that you know we're kind of here because we care about nature, and yet we were the first to be swiped by nature. Um and as a result, you know, because you always that say, you know, there's always good things that can kind of come out of a disaster. It might take you a while to kind of discover what those good things are. But because we do care about nature and we were taken out by nature, you know what what Jess was talking about there, you know, being ready for the next disaster. Like we are now in this new world, like we know that we are in this new world of climate change. We've experienced it, we've been harmed by it, yeah, humbled by it. Yeah, exactly. Um, and now we're gonna now we're a voice for it, you know, and and people sadly won't understand climate change until it hits you, and they won't care about it until it hits you, and it hit us hard. And as a result, it kind of feels an amazing privilege to actually be a voice for it now and to help other communities because as we say to people, no one is safe now, no one, no one's house anywhere in New Zealand is safe. What kind of maybe like West Coast? Well, not what not West Coast of South Island, not really. I mean, you know, everyone's getting hit, you know, like poor Hawks Bay, poor Gisborne. It's just that's it. When it rains, it it is an atmospheric river. It's not just heavy rain, it's an atmospheric river. It just seems to be, you know, we're getting these storms and we are getting these storms more. Um, and so now, yeah, any we've kind of become a voice of of climate change kind of reluctantly, but also it is a privilege. Yeah, because that's why we came out here to live here in the first place. Yeah.
MandyAnd Midowai is doing so many things, you know, in preparation for a potential weather event. You mentioned it it may not be happening in other communities because they're not so aware because they haven't experienced anything. Is there anything that is being done, or can we do anything, do you think, to make sure that all communities are prepared?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think that's what the government well, some governments and what councils realise is that is it does need to be community-led because the community knows what they need in that moment. It's always the same, right? The community knows what they need at the moment. They know that if they've got a community hall with one chair, but they need a community hall with three chairs, so people can sit there and have a conversation. Like they know that they need those three chairs, you know. The council might give you one or the government give you two, but the community will say we need three. Um, so what's really good is if everything is community-led, it has to be community-led to a degree, and then you know, help on top of that is really great, but it should always come from the community. And so, you know, what Jess and was just talking about, yeah, just getting ready because everyone it will hit you. Don't want to sound like a doomsday, but it will impact you, and if it doesn't impact you directly, it'll impact a family member or uh or a friend. It's gonna impact you, and I think this is the new world that we're moving into, and we kind of got pulled into it kicking and screaming.
MandyYeah, and Middleware we're just saying is is a very sort of contained community on the coast, and that almost feels like it could be easier for us to come together when you think of sort of suburbs that kind of blend into other suburbs in Auckland City, for example. Yeah. What plans do that do they need to make?
SPEAKER_02Well, we know of people that are still struggling in those pockets across Auckland. You know, I mean, we were very aware of when we got our newsletter every week from the council. We can go into that another time. Uh, how that was worded. Um, but you know, it was always the number of houses that then had become red stickered, the amount of houses that then were put into categories. And we were really conscious again of that like high density within Murawai, so many were impacted. But people are still, still haven't been, I think maybe now they've been bought out. But you know, people that like their whole community wasn't impacted, but their house was. Like we we've we've talked about that. We're like, how does you know, people have said I I'd be walking down the street and my neighbours just going, Hi, how are you? And they're just like, Oh, I'm red stickered and I'm the only house in the whole suburb that's red stickered. I mean, that brings another level of isolation.
MandyYeah, and the communication from and the individual communication for those people and they and they were trying to um hook into us, you know, and we did.
SPEAKER_02It was like it was an open door policy. It was like anyone that wants to join the group joins the group because you didn't want anyone to feel out in the limb and isolated. So yeah, it would be really difficult. I mean, high density though. I mean, come from a high density city of Glasgow, I mean, there's huge community in that. I mean, you do actually by default know your neighbour because you can hear them screaming at their kids or when dinner's on the table, or you can hear them go into the toilet and have a shower. Um, so you do live on top of each other, and so you you know, that that is a positive thing. Like you do actually do know your neighbour, and so if suddenly there's silence above you, you do worry if someone's had a heart attack, or you know, are they alive today? So, I mean, there's a there's a lot of positive you know stuff with high density because you do know your neighbour by default, but do get to know your neighbour. Don't you don't need to know everything about them, you don't need to have a chat to them every day, but get to know them because they know your movements, they know humans have got patterns. And you know, so I mean that's just not even for disasters, just everyday life is you know when the pattern's not there, is there something?
MandyIs there something amass? Yeah. So more than three years on, I'd like to ask all of you, how are you going emotionally and and how did you find the impact of the cyclone affected you emotionally?
SPEAKER_04I feel like it's a bit of a wild ride. You kind of feel like it's over and you're done and you process it all, and then something happens which kind of throws you again, or somebody mentions it and you kind of well up and you're like, oh, where did that come from? Thought I'd I'd dealt with that.
MandyIt just keeps giving. And you have a son, Mason, Jess. How has it affected him and and how's he going now?
SPEAKER_04Uh he's going well now. He had quite a lot of uh weather-related trauma. He he used to get really upset when it rained. And just he used to be the kid that was asleep through a thunderstorm and it didn't bother him at all. And then he'd just like, I remember one day we're driving in the car. And I turned around to the back seat and he was sobbing because it was pouring with rain, he's just sobbing. And so I I took him to a hypnotherapist that I know who hypnotized him and was like, it's worth a go, and it totally changed him. And there was a couple of days later it was raining, and I kind of watched him out of the corner of my eye, and then he looked up and he goes, Oh, I didn't even realise it was raining. So you know, it helped him, and I think he was a pr pretty lucky, lucky kid because we left the house and went to my parents' house. So he went somewhere that was comfortable and he knew, you know, so he had that security. But it still affected him in ways that you kind of don't think about.
MandyAnd on to you, Charlotte.
SPEAKER_00Um, I feel a lot of emotions about that cyclone. Um I feel very grateful for the the friends that have come out of it. Um, we've made some amazing friends afterwards. We were incredibly well cared for by Pete and Philippa at the time, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have them. And I feel very grateful for the support that eventually came through from the council and the government to enable us to leave the property because um in our case there was no way that we would ever be able to live in the house again. So I do feel very, very fortunate for that. Um there's a lot of emotion tied up in the place that I probably haven't dealt with, um, but it's one of those things um when people talk about resilience and you get through a situation and life carries on and it does carry on because that's the way that we go.
SPEAKER_02And on to your lane, how are you feeling now? Yeah. Actually, I was just saying, like, come before like the thought of coming here to do the podcast. You could I don't know about you guys, but could you feel your throat like constricting? Like actually saying the words out loud. I think so much has been contained inside you. And I was just saying a jest before maybe like you know, in a few months' time we can all just get really drunk and have a wailing session, do you know what I mean? Like wailing women session, um get it all out. Um yeah, it's funny. I I the there's this amazing film on Netflix called Train Dreams, and I won't give spoiler alert, I'm not gonna give you what happens in it, but the main character says, Sometimes I feel like it's gonna drown me, and then other times I feel like it's happening to someone else. And I think that's a really because your brain's trying to disassociate, like you'll feel it, and then it instantly there's days that you're really in it, and then there's you know, like for the l I mean it's this is the only year that you know it's like it's like grief, you know, like for this time of year I knew what I was doing on this day, you know. Like for the last two years, you've stepped it out. It's like, oh King's birthday, that's when we moved into the rental, it was really bad weather, did it, you know, and you step it out because you're just you're trying to process it. Um, and this was the first year that I kind of didn't. King's birthday sort of finished, and then I went, ah so that kind of felt like that was quite nice. It was like a little bit of finally a bit of reprieve, yeah. And then when you talk to people that haven't experienced it, because I'm just kind of doing this contract at the moment, you see people you see the horror in people's faces, but then you also know that they don't understand it because they haven't experienced it and that and you don't want them to experience it, you know. But you do feel like it is a movie, like you're kind of talking about this movie plot and it's all like really surreal and sensationalist, and and then you just want to stop because you just think, oh god, it's really boring, and you know, and you don't want anyone to kind of go through it, but yeah, so I don't know, yeah. I mean, like Charlotte said, you know, look look at the friendship that's been kind of created here. Um yeah, the friendships you wouldn't change for the world, and it's pretty, you know, pretty amazing it came out of a disaster.
MandyYeah, one silver lining. Yeah. Would you like to leave us with something meaningful or hopeful?
SPEAKER_02When more storms come and you hear of other communities being hit, like you bear witness to it. Like you don't turn off the radio, like we tune in and you hear someone going, Oh, we had water rising up to our armpits, and we had to get out and uh clung onto a fence, and and you listen to every single one of them because you want to you've been in their shows and you know what it felt like to not be able to put the key in the door and walk through your own door. Everyone else got to do that, you know, at the end of the day when they came home from work or they woke up in their own bed and they they got to feel that, but they didn't get to feel not been able to put the key in the door and walk through the door, and so when that's happening to communities across New Zealand, like you it instantly you instantly go into their shoes and you want to go into their shoes because you want them to know that you're there with them and you're thinking about them, and when they just kind of cover off, oh you know, I had to cling on to a fence because I was gonna drown, and they're saying it really nonchalant in a kiwi way. You you know but you don't know the same moment, but you know some of the feeling, and it's really important you just want them to know that you you do see them, and you are feeling parts of what they're feeling, and that'll never go away. Yeah.
MandyPrecipice was commissioned and funded by Mudouai Community Association, supported by the Auckland Council Recovery Office. Artwork by Tyler Williams, soundtrack by local Mudawai band Tin People, written in response to Cyclone Gabrielle. Nam Mahee, thank you to the Mudowai community for their input and bravery and for sharing their stories. And thank you for listening.
