A hardy group of locals are in clean-up mode after the Awakino River burst its banks. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
A hardy group of locals are in clean-up mode after the Awakino River burst its banks, flooding about a half dozen houses.
Homes have been left filled with a muddy silt, fences flattened and paddocks left a spongy mess.
Tony Rattenbury is carefully negotiating his sodden lawn, trying to indicate how high the water was that flowed through the villa he calls home.
"Oh mate, so all that the water was up to here and it was deeper out there. It came into my floor, obviously, which is a metre off the ground, so my floor levels up there and it came up there."
A layer of silt has been left throughout Tony Rattenbury's home. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
A thick layer of silt was spread throughout the building.
"When it first started I had it barriered off. I tried to barrier off the back door because there's a step into there, but then it just came up through the floorboards.
"And it was just bubbling and all this carpet was just like so high with water ... it was something to see I have to say."
Rattenbury said his insurance company was coming to visit on Friday and he'd already been warned as the silt dried, it would start to stink.
Next door, Martin Hagenson was mopping out a sodden garage.
"As you can see it was flooded up to that line on the side of the shed and it's all just left as silt now and it's just a big clean up."
Martin Hegason cleans up his flooded garage. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
He was on the property as the river rose.
"I got up at 6am and it started to come and it just started to come in the doorstep there and they told us to vamoose so we did and came back to this."
He was grateful the house was spared.
Damaged goods piled up outside. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Around the corner, Kristy Wright wasn't so lucky.
Friends and family were busy cleaning out the interior of her cottage.
"The water just kept coming up not much you can do about it, so we've just been clearing everything out and scraping out all the mud, waterblasting all the mud out."
Friends and family help clean Kristy Wright's flood damage home. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
She didn't evacuate her home straight away.
"I wanted to put all my stuff up and then I had my cats in there, my animals.
"My son waded in probably up to his ribs and came in and got them one at a time because we got out probably when it was up to our hips. We just went over to the hill there and went up to mum's. Mum's up on the hill."
She had no plans to move away.
"We're just going to fix our house. It is what it is. S... happens."
Sharna Wright says flood waters were up to her ribs when she and her brother Jaden rescued the family's cats from her mum's home. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Her daughter Sharna couldn't believe how high the water got.
"We watched it go up and up and up and were just holding our breath kind of hoping it would stop pretty much, but it didn't.
"My and my brother came down and once we had moved everything up we didn't think it would get any higher and it was probably up over my ribs."
Meanwhile, Jamie Ward - who RNZ reported had been evacuated with her three children - was back with a trailer on a rescue mission of her own.
"I've got two baby rabbits and I've got three lambs in that car. Just because there's no clean food for them, there's not clean grass, so I'm taking them to my mum's where there is."
Jamie Ward, who had been forced to evacuate her home with her three children, returned to rescue their pets. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
She said her children would be happy to be reunited with their pets.
"Yeah, they were stoked when they heard most of them lived, so that's good."
Unfortunately, two pet lambs were lost to the floodwaters.
NZTA advised stretches of State Highways 3, 4, 30, 31 and 43 would remain closed until at least 8pm Friday due to weather-related damage
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