Large swells have been hitting coastal regions, including at high tide in Browns Bay, Auckland.
Photo: RNZ / Gill Bonnett

A Northland coastal community is rallying together using a generator and Starlink satellite at Tutukaka Marina amid the onslaught of Cyclone Gabrielle.

Kate Malcolm, who runs Tutukaka Dive at the marina, has set up a generator with a link to Starlink satellite wireless internet for the locals, who mostly have no power or mobile phone coverage.

Northland Civil Defence said, as of 6am Monday, 17,000 customers in Northland had been left without power.

Northland’s east coast has been hit hardest so far by the extreme weather, with Tutukaka – about 30km north of Whangarei – currently getting hammered by rain and gales.

She told RNZ Nine to Noon‘s Kathryn Ryan the community was working together to clear roads and downed trees, but no one was taking risks.

“No one’s taking any risks because we’re very aware that this is a massive [weather] pattern and we’ve got a couple more days to go – and when it swings, when that little petticoat swirl of Gabrielle hits us, it’s going to come in the opposite direction. So that’s not going to be pretty either.

“Safety first, no heroes. If you’re safe and in your house – stay there. Check on your friends, check on your neighbours, but stay hunkered down for at least another day and a half.”

While she was urging people to avoid taking risks, she praised the efforts of a team who managed to secure an unmanned boat that had drifted into the marina.

“Luckily, they put that boat into a little berth and it’s 70-knot winds so they’re real heroes. There’s another boat that’s up on the rocks at Phillip Island – it’s hard to see what other damage there is at the moment but we suspect more.

“It’s just the sustained battering of the winds, ropes are under stress, you know, everything gets knocked around.”

Swells were topping 9m in some areas, she said, and even in sheltered bays buoys were recording readings of 8.2m. Malcolm said the worst was expected to hit the area between 6pm and 11pm, with high tides about 1pm and 2am.

Any tourists had already been advised to get out while they could.

“It’s just constant so far and I don’t know that there’s any more damage than that, but it’s just hard to tell until we can really see what’s happening.

“There’s some people we’ve got – storm refugees – that are staying in different places, but no tourists wandering around. Some of them didn’t even know there was a storm – we were talking to some of our visitors and just saying ‘no, you can’t go up north’. ‘Oh, we’ll just wait’ – ‘no, you actually have to go now, quickly before it all packs in’.

“Some of the messages got through, some of them didn’t but everyone is safe at the moment, definitely no tourists and no dive trips today.”

After last January’s tsunami, the town had been about to start the rebuild in earnest this week. Malcolm said people needed to look after their wellbeing and take care of one another.

“Looking out the window at this kind of conditions, I mean I’ve sent all my team home. It’s like: stuff is stuff, you can lose stuff and replace it, but you can’t lose people and replace them. So the most important thing is you just keep your people safe.

“About the resilience you just have to get up every day and look at what’s in front of you – can’t think too much about the next step.”

With climate change, she said more thinking may needed to be done about how to prepare for more frequent severe weather events.

“I think there are going to have to be revised ways of looking at drainage, infrastructure – particularly with the marina the way that it’s angled – maybe there is another option.”

In the meantime, her business may struggle – and had done through Covid-19 lockdowns – but she was confident they would be able to come back strong again.

“We have had a bad season. If we can get through this and we can get through Covid, we’re poised to do well in the future because everybody wants to go out to an amazing place – and it’s going to be there when we get out of this.

“Cashflow’s a bit of a nightmare but we are a seasonal tourism business, and Covid hit us hard as well – you just have to show up every day and do your best.”