Precipice
Stories of landslides and community restoration in Muriwai New Zealand following the devastating 13 February 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle.
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Precipice
Evacuate to the Surf Club: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai. Ep 7 Precipice Podcast.
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In this episode I speak with Kate Ward, the surf club facility manager and the administrator of the Muriwai volunteer lifeguard service and the Muriwai lifeguard services amenity trust. Kate is a resident of Waimauku, 8 kms away from Muriwai.
Kate talks about the role of the surf club in Muriwai, some of the problems experienced at the surf club on the night of the cyclone, changes and upgrades that were made to the surf club and surrounding land to better prepare the facility for weather events, accessing government and local council relief funds and grants and dealing with FENZ and Auckland Emergency Management,
We discuss providing accommodation at the facility, the food store and op shop set up at the club after the cyclone, exemptions for paying guests to the surf club, support from other organisations and local businesses, policies for charging some users after the cyclone and Kate shares the effects of the cyclone on commercial bookings and the financial stability for the surf club.
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 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. In this episode, I speak with Kate Ward, the Surf Club Facility Manager and the Administrator of the Muriwai Volunteer Lifeguard Service and the Muriwai Lifeguard Services Amenity Trust. Kate is a resident of Waimoku, which is 8Ks from Muriwai. Kate talks about the role of the Surf Club in Muriwai, some of the problems experienced at the Surf Club on the night of the cyclone, and in the weeks following.
SPEAKER_02The ground was saturated and there was nowhere for it to go. The locals came out with whatever tools, diggers, and they fixed it well and truly.
MandyKate talks about changes and upgrades that were made to the surf club and surrounding land to better prepare the facility for weather events, accessing government and local council relief funds and grants, and dealing with fens and Auckland Emergency Management.
SPEAKER_02It quite quickly to me became obvious that there is no such thing as Auckland emergency management. The amount of times that you heard, okay, alright, I'll escalate that. It's like where are you escalating it to? And I mean Wayne Brown came out and he was just like, Why the fuck would you live under a cliff anyway? You know, like they were just awful.
MandyWe discussed providing accommodation at the facility, the food store and op shop setup at the club after the cyclone, exemptions for paying guests to the surf club, support from other organizations and local businesses, feedback from the community.
SPEAKER_02You know, the hardest one to hear, which you hear in um you know back chat around the community, is that the surf club was unprepared. And um what we do really well at the surf club is save lives in the water. Primary role. Um so yeah, that that's always been a little bit hurtful.
MandyAnd Kate shares the effects of the cyclone on commercial bookings and the financial stability of the surf club.
SPEAKER_02Hi, my name is Kate Ward. Um, our family, young family, moved out here 22 years ago. We bought two and a half acres in Waimoku, um, eight kilometres up the road from Murawai Beach, which was where my sister lived with her young family, and why we came out here with our um two dogs for a lifestyle. We immediately signed the kids up for nippers. So have been involved with surf life saving ever since then, and um slowly but surely we got more and more entrenched in the surf club committee and roles within that. And then fast forward to about 2017, I actually took on the paid role at the Surf Club as sort of facility manager, bookings really, and um then the administrator of the Volunteer Lifeguard Service and the Lifeguard Service Amenities Trust, which is the um facility. My husband, Nate, is a trustee of the facility, which is how I got roped in. So they look after the building itself, and I'm yeah, the Volunteer Lifeguard Service is the prominent tenant within the facility, so they um live there. It's 13 years old now, so um it's a pretty gorgeous um facility for surf clubs. You know, a lot of people say it's the nicest surf club in New Zealand, so it's a pretty cool place to operate from.
MandyThe surf club is like a partly sort of like 51% surf life saving and 49% community, is that right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we we got a loan from Auckland Council on the premise that it could be used for community use. There are other user groups that um are part of it. Mardi Bay Boardwriters, um Muraway Sport Fishing Club, the Play Group's part of it, the Environmental Community Trust who do the nursery and um and also the Muraway Community Association has you know um involvement there. That's probably the extent of community use that's official, but as a principle, if you are organizing a community event that's free, then there is no charge to use the facility. So that's where we draw the differences. If somebody wants to have uh um there's an orienteering, big orienteering group that have their meat there, they pay per person for the use of the I mean it's just comes down to toilet paper, electricity, you know, we have to cover our costs because that's our only way of you know generating any income.
MandyAnd people can rent it for weddings and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02Yep, it's available for external hire for private functions.
MandyYou live in Waimoku, so you're sort of out of the the major disaster zone when the cyclone hit. Can you tell us a little bit about what you were expecting personally before the event and then also what you were thinking about for preparing the surf club?
SPEAKER_02Okay, so um as you know, living rurally with weather events coming, you were always slightly concerned about power. Um we often have power cuts, and personally at our house we have a generator. So we had been down south to a wedding and it was starting to um you know get pretty stormy. We got our personal generator out, and we are always um conscious that the surf club didn't have a generator. So in long-term power outages, you know, over the years, we have bought them in um to keep things running, water, you know, um etc. But it was, you know, the sun was going down on this was it Monday, Sunday? Um, yeah, so we didn't have a generator organized for the surf club. Uh and it was getting pretty stormy, it was kind of bedtime, and um that was basically I sort of can't remember any other planning, uh, when my phone rang and it was my good friend Um Rebecca Muir, whose um sister-in-law's house had just collapsed. Well, they were flooding. Um they owe Domain, obviously Hannah and Eddie's house is Motatara, and they were the first call. Um Hannah's brother Seth and Bex, his wife, um were flooding, Eddie's digging, it's out of control, and they went, Well, come on up. And that by that stage they were out of their house, um, running down over sort of mud with their two little boys. Um Eddie had fallen off a retaining hall. Bex is a nurse, so she was kind of you know, first dealing with that kind of thing. She was busily directed to go down to the surf club, um, you know, promptly, um, while they were getting everyone out of the houses up there, and um she rang me because neither of us had clicked that it was a power cut and the gate wasn't working. She rang me to get the gate coat for the regional park, knowing that I work there and I would know it.
MandyCan you tell us about that gate? Like what what is it?
SPEAKER_02It's an electric gate and it has um after when the regional park closes, so it's later in the summer, earlier in the winter, um, it locks the you know, the bar comes across and you can't enter the regional park without a code. Um and obviously in a power cut. So I was busy telling her the code and she was punching it and using her phone as a torch, and then we both clicked as a power cut. Um, you know, there is no power, so I rang Van, the park ranger. He just lives up towards Parakai, and he was like, There's a tree over my drive. I would come and help, but I can't get out. Um, and I said, How do we open the gate? And he said, smash it. So there's a green power box on the right hand end that locks it. So get back to the others down at the gate and say, Right, get something, a hammer, I don't know, something, smash that, you know, power thing off and the gate will release. And I think by that stage Ian McCarroll might have arrived with something heavy. I, you know, I'm on the phone from um, you know, 8K's down the road, so it was all a bit blurry, but they got in and it was starting to flood. There were lifeguards in the surf club, they were launching an IRB, kind of trying to get people through the water. So the whole front of the surf club was basically um underwater, and Bex kind of kept in contact over the next few hours, but it kind of, I think the last, well maybe that was when I woke up, I got a text. I was reading her text that said they're evacuating us to Womoku War Memorial Hall, um, and then apparently onto the Trust Stadium, help. And um, I think that was about six in the morning, maybe, and so I just threw some clothes on, jumped in my truck, and went down to the War Memorial Hall. And in my Land Rover Discovery, I got two families of four, a single woman, two dogs, and a cat and myself. And it was like people smoking, that's what it felt like. They were sort of you know, escaping out of the evacuation centre. And we drove back up to our house, and we are at the top of a hill, there was, you know, no flooding to deal with.
MandyAnd just back to that gate, has anything been done since, do you know, to kind of mitigate those problems if if an event like that happened again, that you couldn't actually get through the gate? No, that would be a question for regional parks, because it's their gate. Yeah. Um I was just wondering if you knew that regional parks had actually done anything about that.
SPEAKER_02No, and I do think at the time there was sort of a um a suggestion that maybe it could be on a solar, but then that would need battery power to store it. I don't know. No, I don't know what they've um done about that and whether there's now, you know, something like a release button or a um yeah, no, I don't know. Yeah. Because it's the regional parks asset or you know, expense, it's um nothing to do with us.
MandyThe surf club, it is it it had been kind of labelled as the community kind of emergency place to go. Is that right? Well yeah.
SPEAKER_02More discussion happened about that afterwards because obviously there's a you know, in this coastal area, tsunami is, you know, and we're definitely not the place to go in the event of a tsunami. So I mean we get evacuated in the you know, tsunami warning. So us, the golf club, kind of shared that facilities available for shelter.
MandyAnd you hadn't ever actually talked as a club through the possibility of an emergency or a a weather event like that and what the plan would be?
SPEAKER_02No, although if if there was an unlimited budget, we would have had all the things we have now um there. But you know, generators of fifty thousand dollars for a facility like that, um, Starlink, uh, you know, all the things that we now have in place, you know, upgrading the water system so that you could drink the water in whatever event. Um, because that did happen. We, you know, our water got contaminated. Um, yeah. So all those relief funds that we have accessed since have got it to a place now that it automatically has generator comes on. It's all, you know, we've got we've got enough Starlink for the community to use. So if cell phone coverage goes down, because that was the other thing that happened during that night, is there was no cell phone coverage. So the communications all stopped. Um and you're like sitting there in the darkness going, um, I hope they're all right, which they weren't. They were flooding up to their you know, over their ankles, and you know, there was um animals, people, children, old people, you know, which is why the army had to be called my husband, Nate, was the chairman of the Volunteer Lifeguard Service at the time and a trustee. So his phone started ringing, and there was media and you know, all sorts. Um, and they were saying, you know, asking questions, do you know anything about the house that's collapsed? And he was, you know, almost it was almost humorous because they were in our living room, and he was going, No, there's no information, we don't know anything about that. But that is probably when it really became about Dave and Craig for us, because Hannah is and Eddie are sitting on the sofa freaking out, reading text, read you know, like getting information, and slowly it was slowly dawning on them that they might not have survived, um, that they couldn't find him, that they so sort of yes, people have evacuated, yes, people were out of their homes, but it really became for us about the two, um, you know, Dave and Craig missing, and you know, who knows whether they were alive, and so you could just see them go, you know, the blood draining from their faces when they got any text come through. Um, because not only were they um, you know, uh came to their kind of rescue, but they were all friends. They all had the peer groups, kids were all the same age, they were, you know, close to both those families. So um yeah, I don't know, it just seemed to go one thing after another.
MandyUm Charlie's boss That's Charlie Ward, Kate's son, and Luke Nabarro from Alpha Electrical.
SPEAKER_02Rang Charlie because Seth's car was stuck down at the surf club and they needed to get Hannah and Eddie to their parents' place, and so I rang Charlie and his gorgeous Luke, let Charlie come and get Seth and his big four-wheel, Charlie's big four-wheel drive, and they plowed through the floodwater, got Seth's four-wheel drive. While they were doing that, Luke had said to Charlie, Tell Hannah and Eddie they can have my rental, it's now vacant, so you know, which is up on the top in Costa. So it was sort of ten o'clock and it was felt like a big wrap around of this family because it's like, right, well, you're gonna have somewhere to stay. You have nothing. Um but yeah, Seth basically bundled them up, they needed to get Eddie's head seen to and then get them to Seth and Hannah's parents' place to be looked after. The next wave of um displaced people arrived, which was when Jane and her family arrived.
MandyThat's Jane McCall and Ian McCarroll and their two girls, Vegas and Jet.
SPEAKER_02The yeah, the full flooding, surf club flooding, being up all night, it was all becoming um, yeah, all the stories were coming out. Um more dogs arrived. I think we had seven in the end for a few weeks. Um, but uh Bex and Seth seemed to be kind of sorted. They went to their parents, but then they still had a school, you know, they still had Theo who's, you know, trying to maintain some kind of so they ended up with a camper van and they parked it out the front of our house and kind of came and went a bit um trying to be a bit independent, but it was, you know, then that broke down. Um so yeah, there was one thing after another. So there for a while there there was um Jane and Ann and her their girls and Bex and Seth in there too. And then for me the emergency network meeting started basically. Um Weirdly I'd taken a delivery of a whole lot of toilet paper. Oh, the cleanup at the surf club was obviously the first thing that was probably Wednesday, and we got down and there was an amazing turnout. There was, you know, 20 people there, everyone's moving furniture, mopping, um, getting rid of all the um, you know, uh flooded stuff, and yeah, so I arrived with all the toilet paper that was sitting in my garage, fortunately, because everything else that was in the surf club was ruined. And um, yeah, we began to, you know, bring it all back, but quite quickly realised that something needed to be done around the perimeter of the building because it would just flood again. And I think there was a little bit more of a forecast then that there was more rain coming, and so a little bit of remedial work was done, but then it flooded again whenever that next rain came.
MandyAnd um had you ever had flooding before?
SPEAKER_02No, never.
MandySo it was just I mean, it was the rain was like we'd never seen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the rain like we'd never seen, and I've always thought, and I think I've kind of run this by, Nate's the engineer, not me, but I think there was the water supply had gone into the earth, so it was just running down towards the surf club from all over Mudaway. Um, you know, the water care you know, up above this the houses over there. So um there it was just a phenomenal amount of water. Um and where was it coming from? You know, not just the sky and not just a wire road. You know, it was coming from all over. It was like it was just the ground was saturated and there was nowhere for it to go. So anyway, that time, I think that was a Friday afternoon, all the locals came out with whatever tools, diggers, and they fixed it well and truly for good.
MandyHow did you make the call out to get that kind of support?
SPEAKER_02I can't remember. I I usually when somebody's calls me, I first thing I do is call Nate. Ah, I think we've got flooding happening again, and it just very quickly. There is a quite a few uh local lifeguards that are plumbers and um Brian Chapman who's got you know their house up there. Uh I think he's got his own digger. It's amazing what comes out of those long driveways. Yeah, the community page, texting, and yeah. Um just everyone congregated down there and um yeah, prevented it being as bad. It was still inside. Um, and so yeah, a whole lot more mopping and a whole lot more Tidying up, but we had lifted quite you know, it wasn't quite as bad as the first one because everything was up and over, but yeah. And then once you've done the cleanup, what happened then? This comes back to the people as well. Um so whilst all of this displaced residents and all of that's happening, there is a s very tragic organization of first of all the funerals. Um and so yeah, Fenz was very much the first organisation kind of that we were dealing with. Um so first of all, I was dealing with national level fans who or the regional who said we are gonna send in, you know, um patr uh what are they called? Brigades from all over the region to give the Murawai Brigade a break for grief and, you know, relief. And so they booked in with the surf club and we had them living upstairs and a new truck would come every day and um they'd change out, and they were really they were the first organization that we had anything to do with really that was sort of onto it. Um, you know, they booked them, we knew who they were, how many was coming, and they stayed at the surf club. Um, it quite quickly to me became obvious that there is no such thing as Auckland emergency management. It's a um it's like a folder that various people's names, you know, mm or they get passed around. Um we got the first guy and he was great, and he came to the meetings and he was like, right, what do we need to do? Within ten days he was gone. You know, like it wasn't his actual job, and so you sort of thought, oh, here and he was a really kind of looked like an ex-army capable looking guy, and you're like, phew, you know, this guy's gonna organise everything and get it all sorted. And um he was they were all only there for sort of one to two weeks and then go on again, and it was like basically being plucked from various council jobs and said, Right, you're gonna be uh m based at Miraway for the next two weeks and they didn't know yeah, yeah, it was chaos.
MandyYeah, and then you can't sort of get any momentum or consolidation or you know, and building relationships and it's like every person has to start again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and also they had no because it's not an actual role, they had no ability to make anything happen. I mean, the amount of times that you heard, okay, all right, I'll escalate that. It's like where are you escalating it to? Like who and I mean Wayne Brown came out and he was just like, Well, why the fuck would you live under a cliff anyway? You know, like they were just awful. And um, and not their fault, like the regional park, obviously, Scott, who everybody had so much to do with, trying as hard as they can to, you know, do what they can, but nobody really had any power. So, yeah, that's going on in the on the side, and then the fens locally they wanted to be in charge of the funerals. And um so that that for me that was one of the most trickiest things because it was just so um because I would have their families contacting me or their friends saying we'd like to have something at the surf club. And you're sitting in a meeting with Felon, he's going, I don't even know who the fuck that guy is. No, we are organising that, you know, and it was like um it became a real power struggle of who's but I think both um yeah, Amy and Lucy sort of surrendered and it was like, okay, f let fans do what they need to do, and they you know organised two really beautiful services up at Paddy Hora. But uh yeah, so that was sort of one of the things in the first few weeks, and then um yeah, those meetings became daily, and you know, so a small little 20-hour a week part-time job was full-time.
MandyDo you think in your role as administrator you kind of go above and beyond, or is that what you see as the role?
SPEAKER_02Um I definitely have a wider vision of what happens at the Surf Club and how it operates than say the lifeguards do, or the um even individual trustees, because they don't kind of have the um day-to-day both sides of the, you know, who's the tenant, who's got something booked. So I was definitely, I felt that I definitely needed a seat at those meetings because decisions were being made about the facility by people that had nothing to do with the facility, you know. So I remember when it started raining again, because the council or Auckland Emergency Management set themselves up in easy ups at the park rangers, and you know, they had water around their ankles. It was so inadequate, and you know, they weren't even port comps lifted in, or you know, like it was just a couple of little tents. Maybe they thought they'd be here for a week or so, you know, like but it didn't seem to be very well thought out, and all of a sudden they were relocating for to the surf club, and it was like, okay, hang on a second, you know, you are Auckland Council. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking you need to hire this facility because it can't be used for anything else while you're here. People that were trying to help all the residents in the displaced people, you know, had their table in their little area within the classroom. It was the bathrooms, the kitchen, and like I said before, you know, electricity, toilet paper, nobody pays for that. So I remember about I don't know, they were there for some time. You know, that was aside. Meanwhile, the free shops being set up and which was fantastic. That's all community, that's all the people, you know. Probably the biggest regret was the op shop upstairs, because that just grew and grew and grew, and that's something that could have been done off site. Because people did have cars. I mean, the odd person lost their car, but people were coming and going. You know, it was we weren't cut off like you know, people in some areas of um where the you know cyclone hit. So yeah, that would be my that was the thing that got out of hand a bit. And it was like, hang on a second, people just arriving with bootloads and bootloads of you know, hand-me-downs and bits and bobs, and yeah, that should have been done in a hall somewhere else. Yeah, and that was taking your dormitories, your Yeah, all the sleeping accommodation and all the the kind of the space, you know, and I also think not everybody wanted to come and rummage through what was available, you know. If it had been slightly more anonymous, slightly out of the area, people might have been like, Do you know what? I don't actually have any track pants, I wouldn't mind going and having a look, and you know, and it was yeah, so that that in hindsight, that was the hardest thing to get rid of, and the hardest it made the biggest impact on the facility, that op shop. But the free shop was amazing, everybody who operated it, um, you know, fridges arrived, catered meals, we used our chiller. That I think worked really well, and that was um easy, really, and that was nothing to do with Auckland Emergency Management. That was the people, yeah.
MandyAnd then obviously at that time you weren't getting bookings for weddings or anything like that. So you could use the kitchen facility if you had to.
SPEAKER_02Well, absolutely. Not only were we not getting any bookings, we weren't allowed them because it we became a residence-only area, right, with the uh road. So um anything that was booked had to be cancelled, and we did have quite a few, you know, bookings that were coming up being the end of summer, and um yeah, so all our external higher revenue was just you know evaporated. The golf club were the first ones to get in and say, you know, we need exemption to get people through um the cordon. And uh we didn't try for a while, but once it all settled down, I did get an exemption for a rotary group, which is a huge chunk of our annual revenue. They bring 30 odd kids for a well, young adults for a youth leadership camp every year, and they were so respectful, and they took them to Sandjunes for breakfast, and you know, like they made a yeah, so the council, but I had to formally get approval for that um, you know, exemption to come through the court. And slowly but surely things became more email-based rather than the daily get-togethers, but they were they went on for a while.
MandyKate's referring to the emergency response group.
SPEAKER_02One to two hours, either at the golf club or the surf club, um, just the various accommodation, all the various aspects that needed to be set up. And obviously, primarily the accommodation. It wasn't something that started straight away, because it was people were at friends' houses, you know, that it it became apparent, well, hang on a minute, we're gonna need somewhere to live long term because you know they're not letting us back in anytime soon. So, yeah, that was the sort of the second wave, really, I think.
MandySo people families had come and stay at the surf club? Sometimes, yep.
SPEAKER_02Um we made it an option, but we don't it's BYO everything, so it wasn't actually um ideal for a displaced family, because it was like, well, actually there's no pillows, there's no duvets, there's no blankets, there's no towels, but um people were definitely showering and using the facilities they were able to work. I mean the the fence groups had half the accommodation maybe for a few weeks, and then the rest of the bunk rooms were like I said, slowly filled up with the op shop.
MandyYeah, yeah. And uh were you getting any other outside help or support for what was happening at the surf club?
SPEAKER_02No, only our committee, but everybody is set for me as a volunteer. So um, I mean, Alpha Electrical were amazing, um uh our IT guy, Anthony O'Meara, is yeah, he was incredible, he got all sorts of things sorted, he um uh yeah, I no, we we were kind of leaving the council to it, but in the background I was slowly but surely adding up the external hire and when I sent the invoice they didn't stay much longer after that.
MandyReally? You know, they were like, right, we'll retreat. And they paid it, no worries.
SPEAKER_02They did pay it, yeah. And it was I mean, you know, if you wanted if anybody wanted to go and set up that kind of an operation in a privately owned facility, it's you know, who's paying? Yeah. So yeah, no, it was. And and by this stage too, Red Cross had come um come out of the woodwork and said, right, we'd like to help. I mean, you know, I had found myself in the most vis hilarious situations. All of Red Cross and their fancy uniforms arrive. I don't know how many were there and they were trying to help. They were like, right, can we just have an on-site health and safety briefing? It was like, don't really have one of those procedures. Um, that's the cliff. You know, like uh that road's closed, you can't go up there. Uh the toilets are over there, you know, and then all these serious people would be looking at me going, okay, any hazards? Yeah, the cliff. That's a big hazard. On the flood, water, don't go in there, we don't know what that is. Hasn't been tested. The really big one that it took a few months to get it, but um was the grant from MPI to buy the generator. And I think once those things started, you know, coming, everyone sort of chilled out a bit.
MandyAnd did you have to fill in some sort of application form for that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, a grant application it was from the Ministry of Primary Industries, um, you know, disaster relief fund, something. And I mean, you know, there was another one we got from the Department of Internal Affairs, and that was the Starlink. So they're all government disaster funds that you do have to, you know, find. They don't come knocking on your door.
MandyYeah. And that's the hard thing, I think, because every community needs someone like you who actually works out, okay, what how do I find this place? What what is who's the person I need to speak to? Yeah, what do I need to fill out, fill it in, send it off, you know. And it's it you just need people who can take those kind of initiatives.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think for me too, not living here helped. I mean, you know, this is a terrible thing to say, but I loved driving up Whiteia at the end of every day, you know, it was just like, ugh, it was quite uh suppressed, you know, everything, every time you turn around and look at somebody, they're like got a look about something, and this is it's like, right, okay, yes, we can get that, yes, we can get that. And so driving out and you know, being able to sort of be elsewhere and do that paperwork and submit that stuff was really important for my um you know, mental health.
MandyYeah, totally. So speaking of mental health, how did the experience affect you emotionally?
SPEAKER_02Um I think I'm one of those people that being busy helps, and so having a job, a role, um made me feel better. You know, like not quite so serious about it, because it's like, right, I know what I've got to do, we need more toilet paper, you know, being practical. So yeah, there was a lot of coordination, logistics, picking up donations, getting finding somewhere to put them. A lot of my friends' businesses wanted to help, so you know, coordinating with them, with the Halotel meals and the um, yeah, it was a um we also had a couple of uh social things with uh the paddle out for Craig and Dave. I think it was a combined thing. So, you know, it was like, right, well, we put on a free barbecue and we put on a, you know, so but getting those being busy was how I kept yeah, but it's more second hand for me. Like I I feel it, um I think I think it was not long after, I think they were still displaced in my because Vegas was staying in and about our house and you know, and around and had literally a panic attack in the next storm. And you know, which which she wasn't the only one. A lot of people running around like you know, and driving out and calling me, right? I'm coming to your place.
MandyYeah, I had Nikki and Kenton ring me up, I think on just one of the reins afterwards. A while after, it's like, can you come up here and stay the night? And I'm like, I'm fine, we're fine. No, we really want you to come up and stay. Like, we have a room for you and we've made the bed. We want you up here. Yeah. Like we will not sleep if you're still down the bottom. Not that we were at risk of anything. No, but just yeah, I think for comfort for everybody, just making sure all the friends were okay. Yeah. You know, it was it was a funny time.
SPEAKER_02It was a funny time. I know, I was just remembering something then. Remember, it was all about sandbags for a while there. Yeah. You know, you're just trying to get the council or someone to you know, and like th four months later, they're still on the stacks of the shelves at the surf club that they arrived, and it's like they're empty. Really? Yeah, just sacks. I was like, cool, they're really useful. Thanks. You know, and like getting the calls from the council, see somewhere where we could put our sandbags, it was like I don't know. It just seemed to be nobody was prepared.
MandyAre there impacts of the cyclone event that people might not understand, or are there sort of negative impacts that have come out of that experience?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the one, you know, the hardest one to hear, which you hear in um, you know, back chat around the community, is that the surf club was unprepared. And um what we do really well at the surf club is save lives in the water. Primary role. Um, so yeah, that that's always been a little bit hurtful because we weren't prepared. Um, but we are well and truly now established with reliable supply systems, water supply, sorry, our water's been completely had a um makeover. We've got a generator. The Sara squad is fully equipped to um with Starlink and um, you know, that's going to be huge with the communications if another event is um, you know. So the surf club's now way more resourced for an emergency. Um but what we found helpful at the time or in the recovery were the doers, not the talkers. So you just had to sort of block, you know, out that the one thing that was really good was the non-perishable donations. So, you know, that car seats, high chairs, dog beds, all of those things that'd come and go like that because people were literally trying to recreate their homes. I mean, do you remember they couldn't get in, the freezers were rotting and the you know, like so yeah, just all of that stuff was um yeah, it was it was logistically a little bit of a, you know, I mean we had to have crews and you know to receive the goods, to stash the goods, but there were that those people were great. Um and then the hardest part was probably the friends and loved ones being displaced. I'm getting all emotional. And then the other thing for the surf club is watching people leave.
MandySo yeah, it feels different, doesn't it? What do you think the Mira Miraway community uh did really well?
SPEAKER_02Uh well my daughter gave me a saying and I'm very early in my today o journey. I was explaining to her in English what I thought it did, and she said this is a very famous Maori saying He aha te mea nui or teao Hei Tangata, hei tangata, hei tangata Yeah So um yeah the learned about yourself, I'm actually quite good in the crisis lol um famous old saying that my father brought me out with is when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Um but for me I was in a privileged position, you know, I was high on a hill and safe. So, you know, um uh welcome people into my home was easy. Uh commercially the avoid Muraway messages really affected us. You know, the phone stopped ringing, the email inquiries stopped, you know, and I don't often listen to commercial radio, but I remember turning it on and you know the messages were leave them alone. You know, they're in recovery mode. It's like, oh Yeah. We wouldn't mind the odd booking, you know, like that um that's been hard to get the momentum back up of corporates because we you know have an In the past, had quite good revenue from corporate workshops and things, but that c that message in wider Auckland was you know, leave the West Coast beaches alone has definitely commercially affected us.
MandyAnd do you feel three years on that that's starting to improve?
SPEAKER_02Um I don't think everyone's forgotten yet. You know, like um we weirdly the predominant bookings we've had in the last two years since the cyclone is search and rescue, you know, workshops and trainings and Ministry of Primary Industries trainings and you know, fisheries. So, you know, the people that are relevant to the regional park in the area. Um not a lot of um other commercial, you know, certainly not not really any corporate.
MandyAnd what about the weddings? Have they dropped off?
SPEAKER_02Got two in the next two weeks, first two for ages. So I think we actually cancelled four after the cyclone. Um, you know, and and that's coming off the back of COVID as well. So yeah, it's been long, you know, it's it hasn't been um a great five years for the surf club in that respect, because we had to yeah, cancel a lot of stuff.
MandySo financially, what happens if you're sort of struggling or your your pots are a bit empty?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um we've never been, you know, like um with the predominant tenant being the Volunteer Lifeguard Service, which is now um funded by um central government like an emergency service, like it should always be. Um you know, that's a good solid permanent tenant for us, but you know, there's a famous saying around these places that said you should you know, people say you should, you should have more events, you should, you know, and we sort of but to the community it's like right back at you, you should, you know, there is a facility sitting there, you know, great facility. And people but people don't really have the energy or the know-how or whatever to put events on. But yeah, it's a great facility, and you know, the art exhibition weekends coinciding with the marathon, it was heaving and it was so lovely to see. It was lovely weather, bars open, there's food trucks, it was really cool to see, and it could be like that a lot more.
MandyYeah, it's an amazing facility. So yeah. What advice can you give to people in communities or organizations like yours going through an event like this?
SPEAKER_02Um definitely have somebody in you know in charge of um funding applications for, you know, emergency service, you know, uh disaster relief. Um you know, but pretty much found a few of those out of chance or, you know, talking to people. Um you know, having that um having that uh help to be able to let us let people use the facility for good things, for community things, but not having the concern about having uh our bills racking up and who's gonna pay them. So yeah, that balance out for between the disaster relief, don't rely on the council. Um, you know, you need to find it within the various agencies that are out there to help, and they are, you know. I mean, Red Cross arrived with 48 shovels and all the wheelbarrows and things. It was like, okay, not sure we need all of those, but you know, there are all sorts of divisions of those type of agencies that are there to help you and you just have to find them.
MandyYeah. And I wonder if there's a sort of a bit of a pack of like an information pack that could be given to other surf clubs around New Zealand to help them prepare in the case of an event like this. Especially if they're a sort of community gathering point. Yeah. Which often they are.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, I mean, the three biggies are the water, the electricity and the um communications, you know, and if you've got those things, then you can generally uh create I mean, you know, the other thing that the army turned around and said, let's just get out of here. You know, and I think a lot of especially smaller communities, that would be the message. You know, it's like stop trying to, you know, make this safe. And that's what the army did, you know, that night. Um but uh I mean I I think if I was here and we had no power and things were flooding, going to the surf club now would be a really um uh safe option.
MandyWhich is great. And you've you've achieved so much just to to make it like that now, you know. You've you've you've done so many things so that it is a place that people can go to safely, knowing that, you know, being confident that it's going to be ready. And you know, in hindsight, you could see what you weren't organized with, but who would have known? Like it's it's a sort of one-off event. And and now you're prepared.
SPEAKER_02That's right. I mean, we've always been incredibly, you know, um highly skilled and uh prepared for someone drowning. You know, we've got the we are the centre of lifeguarding excellence. And I mean that is the ongoing issue with our search and rescue squad as well. It's like, hang on, the emergency services are turning us into any kind of search and rescue. We're marine-based. We have jet skis and boats and you know, swimmers and tubes. Don't call us to a problem in the forest. Yeah, in the forest. And yeah, it's a little bit of a um under-resourced area, I think, emergency services, and it certainly is in the Auckland Council. I mean, you're probably better off in a smaller community where there's a civil defence, you know, because they've had to create a pack and create a person with it, you know, and it's like Auckland doesn't really have that, you know, the city's too big.
MandyAnd is there something hopeful or meaningful you'd like to leave us with?
SPEAKER_02You know, we were not only dealing with a natural disaster, we were dealing with the death of the, you know, two community members and brigade fire brigade officers. So that I think made it so much darker and so much harder. The people around this area, you if you just pick up the phone and ask anybody for anything, they would do it. You know, and I think we all experienced that.
MandyPrecipice was commissioned and funded by Mudawai Community Association, supported by the Aucton Council Recovery Office. Artwork by Taylor Williams, soundtrack by local Mudawai band Tin People, written in response to Cyclone Gabrielle. Nam Mahi, thank you to the Mudawai community for their input and bravery, and for sharing their stories, and thank you for listening.
