So the pace in the EOC changed today with CHB staff coming back on. Any transition comes with some disruption but by mid morning we were in the groove. By days end we had some team successes.
While lots of roads and bridges are pretty buggered, CHBs upper catchment is sheep and beef pastoral nestled under the Ruahine ranges. The evidence shows a distinct lack of tree debris in CHB compared with northern catchments. The feeling is that this played a major factor in many bridges remaining intact. In fact a distinctive feature of the washouts is not that the bridges failed but that either one of the approaches was scoured out to the point of total failure. This suggests sheer water volume and velocity rather than debris flow.
Another fun fact is that the Waipawa river changed course, from its original alignment, to its current course during a 1868 flood (Wikipedia). So with the intensity of the Gabrielle rain (750mm over 24 hours), it isn’t surprising that it wanted to revert to its original course. Or it could just be that the river remembered where it used to go (water memory).
Having bonded in the morning I then found out about Big Bertha. Not the Bertha from the Waipuk Leopard hotel, but a much less inspiring and equally voluminous water pump. Big Bertha handles any stormwater overflow into the Waipukurau wastewater treatment plant. And on the very day that more rain was forecast she sadly decided to crap out (pun not intended). After being craned out we received a request to bring in a mobile pump as a contingency. There was some confusion and urgency so controller escalation triggered a response. The airforce was probably keenly gearing up for an NH90 sling load but we’ll never know as the 3 waters team found out their contractor had given them some wrong intel. Pump 3 was back on line, Big Bertha was in for an overhaul and the cows downstream of the sewerage ponds could sleep easy in the Knowledge their paddocks wouldn’t be covered in Waipuk leftovers.
The other excitement of the day (apart from establishing a tasks log) were some rogue trucker road runners who were busting a weight limit on one of the bridges. The bridge has been compromised in the flood and the roading crew had real concerns that as a critical asset, it could let go under heavy loads. Which would mean a years detour, a costly rebuild and one very embarrassed trucker. With the controllers approval we mobilised and in a few minutes hatched a plan. The road crew would place chicane bollards to let light vehicles through, Intel would call all the trucking firms to reinforce the message, Public Information Management (PIM) would put out comms, and Logistics would procure a motion capture camera to mount on the nearby pub as evidence if the worst did happen. The publican was most cooperative having already turned away some heavies - perhaps motivated by the loss of a years worth of customers if the bridge failed. Ops coordinated and we thought that in the spirit of teamwork it was only fair that Welfare could handle the traumatised truckers who had to detour an extra hour or so. True teamwork across council staff some of who, 6 hours ago, had never met. Groove or rhythm, today felt like we had it.
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