Storm Damage

Kerikeri, being in the almost sub-tropical Northland region of New Zealand, has its fair share of sunny, warm weather. As we've recently discovered, though, when it rains, it sometimes really rains!

On the morning of Saturday June 18, we opened the front door to find our carport up to an inch deep in muddy silt. On further exploration, we discovered that the majority of our nice, apparently solid, metal-gravel driveway had been washed down towards our house. As the pictures show, it seems as though the stormwater drains that run alongside the road weren't able to cope with the volume of water that must have fallen overnight - certainly the two drains into one culvert situation can't have helped. Unfortunately, once the water came over the top, there was only one place for it to go - downhill, towards our house, carrying the driveway with it!

Mud in the car port - vine nets in their bags in the background next to toppled bicycles still in their packing

Centimetres from the car-port - how close the driveway/mudslide came

From the foot of the driveway

Source of the problem, two stormwater drains into one culvert under our driveway

Muddy watermarks on the walls show that the water must have been as high as four or five inches so we're really lucky that no water made it inside. In fact, apart from the driveway, no damage was done.

Not quite the Saturday morning we were expecting, it meant a quick trip to the local hardware store (Mitre 10) to buy shovels and a water-blaster - then a few hours cleaning out the mess, unblocking drains and putting in place some temporary measures in case the heavy rain falls again!

Now we just need to get the council out here to do something about the drains and hopefully help us avoid this sort of thing happening again!