Around 300 people who took refuge on roofs of houses were evacuated by the army in New Zealand after the passage of cyclone Gabrielle, which killed four people and displaced 10,500 people, authorities said on Wednesday.
The body of a fourth victim, a child believed to be ‘caught by rising waters’, has been found in the rural village of Eksdale on the country’s east coast, police say.
Three other people had previously been found dead in areas affected by the cyclone: one at the location where a firefighter was reported missing when a house collapsed during the stormy weather in West Auckland and two others in the area of Hawke’s Bay, North Island, according to Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty.
The New Zealand Army has deployed three NH90 helicopters to the hard-hit Hawke’s Bay area. There they rescued workers, families or pets perched on sodden roofs to escape the rising waters.
Mr. McAnulty hailed the “phenomenal” work of rescuers and the army who evacuated “nearly 300 people” from rooftops in the hard-to-reach Hawke’s Bay area.
A group of 60 people were rescued from a large flooded building.
Although the worst is over, authorities warned on Wednesday that all danger was not yet over.
Violent winds and torrential rains affected the North Island, where more than three quarters of the country’s five million inhabitants live, overnight from Monday to Tuesday, causing floods and landslides.
The authorities are beginning to measure the extent of the damage in isolated towns where floodwaters have washed away roads and cut communications.
Some 10,500 people have been displaced, the emergency management minister said, and 140,000 are without power, although power is gradually being restored.
The area, once bucolic landscapes, is unrecognizable, between impetuous torrents, destroyed roads and major landslides.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins called Gabrielle “New Zealand’s most significant weather event this century” and a national state of emergency was declared for a week.
“This is a significant disaster,” McAnulty said, stressing that it will take “many weeks” for affected areas to recover.
“The road is long,” he concluded.