Residents of about 30 homes in Rotorua remain in temporary accommodation this morning after having to evacuate after flooding yesterday.
Photo: Supplied
The district received over 1.5 times its normal total April rainfall in just 38 hours. It was also the city's wettest hour since records began in 1964, with 51.8mm of rain falling between 10am and 11am yesterday.
Roading crews resumed work at first light to remove debris blocking a handful of roads in the area. Road blocks on Western Road were lifted before 8am.
The bulk of people evacuated were in Western Road and surrounding streets in Ngongotaha, just north of Rotorua.
Bruce Mapson had to be rescued from his Brookdale Road property by boat.
"Just a little dinghy, the guys just pushed it out, you know, it was about up to thigh deep or up to your stomach."
He said they had to paddle for about 300m before they reached dry land, and he was in shock and felt a bit numb.
"Surreal, like, you know, 'this can't be happening to me, but we just carry on'. But I had other people there to talk to so that brought the anxiety down a bit."
All those forced to evacuate either spent the night with family or friends or in temporary accommodation found for them by Civil Defence.
Colin Berryman has lived in Weston Road for nine years and said the water level rose very quickly and within the space of about 10 minutes had come up half a metre.
"Back fence of my property is completely washed away. Inside of my garage is probably half a metre deep in water and it's about I'd say nearly a metre deep around the rest of the house."
Taihure Thompson was in her Hinemoa Street home and while the rain was very heavy yesterday morning she initially didn't think anything of it.
It wasn't until she looked outside she found her whole property was flooded.
"It got to the first height of the stairs and I thought, well I sort of panicked and then I rang Rotorua council on the 24-hour phone number to tell them that our street was flooded."
She spent last night in temporary accommodation and is a little worried about what she will find when she goes home.
"Well we can't go back in our houses, because we you won't be able to use the toilets or showers because the sewer will probably come back up.
Glen Armstrong has a rental property and was in the process of doing it up. He said water was coming into the house within five minutes of noticing the flooding.
"So I was rushing around trying to get everything up and grabbing everything I needed and the firemen were out the front and the road was already about two feet underwater outside my house."
He said there was about 300mm of water inside the house and still rising when he left it.
"So, hung around to see what was going to happen and they thought the water might have peaked but it just really kept coming up, seemed to be more water coming and didn't seem to be anywhere for it to go.
"So it was running through our property and into the farm behind."
Ngongotaha River runs through part of Neil Heather's sheep and beef farm in Paradise Valley.
Mr Heather says he took his tractor to help his neighbours yesterday when the rapidly rising river meant he himself ended up having to be rescued.
"So I took it down to help the neighbours and the river came up within about five minutes came up about a metre and submerged the tractor.
Fences on Neil Heather's farm were broken and flooded after Ngongotaha Stream breached its banks. Photo: Supplied / Neil Heather
"So then we had to be rescued off the roof of a tractor which was a bit embarrassing."
Neil Heather said many of his paddocks are flooded and he would have a lot to clean up after bridges and fences were damaged, but he did not think he had lost any livestock.
MetService said there were a few light showers overnight and more were expected today, particularly in the afternoon. There was also a chance some would be heavy, but nothing like yesterday's downpours.
'We were expecting much higher numbers' - Mayor
Mayor Steve Chadwick said the council was relieved it had not been worse than it was.
"There was a ring of about 380 houses that we were really worried about, and Colin Berryman's house was one of those. I was relieved to hear him say 10 to 15 properties were really affected because we were expecting much higher numbers.
"But until we get out in the light of day and see the actual impact for those that had evacuated we're not going to know the extent.
It had stopped raining for now, and the sun had come out making it seem very surreal after the tumultuous weather.
"It was very frightening. We've been saturated in the whole basin for some time, because we've had up to six adverse weather events over summer and we haven't been able to drain the place fully.
"That deluge was just too overwhelming and it affected some of the sewage networks ... but worse was the Ngongotaha Stream and the flood.
"Talking to residents, it was like a wall of water that just rushed down - from surface rain that they thought they were coping with - so it must have been very frightening for them.
"We've kept the energy events centre open.
"We could've taken, you know, over 400 people there last night but obviously a lot of people would have gone to their own family and friends and they will be really anxious today to get back in and see what happened.
She said the Ngongotaha Primary School and the early childhood centre had closed yesterday. Emergency services would be monitoring the area to see who would be allowed back in as the waters receded, she said.
