International
Cyclone Gabrielle: Auckland at a standstill as storm emergency grows in New Zealand’s North Island
Gabrielle is currently sitting 250 km (155 miles) northwest of New Zealand’s coast and is forecast to move close to the east coast over the next 24 hours.
- Thousands of homes across the country are currently without power. Electricity is out for 46,000 homes, cell service is patchy in some areas and trees have come down and roofs lifted off. Emergency management minister Kieran McAnulty said it would be a “critical day” due to the “highly dangerous” combination of high winds and heavy rain.
- Almost all of the top half of the North Island has been covered by localised states of emergency including in Auckland – New Zealand’s largest city of 1.7 million people – as well as in Northland, Coromandel, Ōpōtiki, Whakatāne, Tairāwhiti and Hauraki.
- Communities in coastal regions evacuated on Monday. Mandatory evacuations were ordered along the entire eastern Bay of Plenty coastline – an area covering about 400 homes – as well as for 100 homes in the Whakatāne district in the Bay of Plenty region.
- National forecaster MetService said it had broken its record for “red” weather warnings issued around the country, and wind gusts of 150-160km/h were recorded.
- New Zealand prime minister Chris Hipkins warned the worst is yet to come as Cyclone Gabrielle sparks evacuations, rising flood waters and power outages across the North Island. “Things are likely to get worse before they get better,” Hipkins said. “Extreme weather event has come on the back of extreme weather event.”
- Hipkins added that the “threshold for a national emergency has not yet been met” as of 4pm on Monday but officials were “getting an update every four hours” and reassessing.
- The New Zealand government announced a $11.5m community support package to help tens of thousands of people affected by the recent floods as well as to prepare for the response to Cyclone Gabrielle.
- Air New Zealand cancelled 509 flights with 10,000 international customers affected by the disruptions. Normal services are expected to resume on Tuesday.
- The cyclone is the second significant weather event to hit Auckland and the upper North Island in just a few weeks. Last month Auckland and surrounding areas were hit by record rainfall that sparked floods and killed four people.
