About 3000 homes in West Auckland are still without water, with authorities warning services will come and go in some suburbs over the coming days.
Russel and Sarah Sargon in Titirangi have been without water for three days and have been frustrated at the lack of information.
“It’s just depressing, it’s wearing us down. We understand there are priorities, and we will take our place in the queue, just tell us what is going on,” Russel Sargon said.
A power pole across the road from their home was “barely holding on” and they were nervous it would collapse and take out the power supply.
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Power crews had not visited the street since the pole destabilised on Friday, Sargon said.
Titirangi’s Mary Betz said residents on Paturoa Rd had no power, no water and no vehicle access to their homes.
“Luckily, we have a water tank, and there’s been plenty of rain filling it up, so we’ve been sharing with neighbours and making hot drinks on a camping stove.”
Abigail Dougherty
Workers clear the road of clay that swept Paturoa Rd during heavy rain.
Residents in need of a hot shower, including Betz, had been walking along a sliver of road still hanging to the edge of a cliff so they could picked up by friends.
“We got out with a backpack full of soap. We got to see a lot of neighbours we had never met before.”
Betz said she was told a power cable had been severed and that crews from lines company Vector hoped to restore power by Tuesday.
“We’ve lost the contents of our freezer now. This morning everything had turned to mush,” she said on Monday.
Abigail Dougherty
A retaining wall in Titirangi was washed clean away by a landslide following Friday’s storm.
Watercare chief operations officer Mark Bourne said landslides had washed away several water mains, and restoring services had been challenging.
“While we believe more than 3000 properties were without water initially, this is reducing by the hour.”
He said services had been restored on Monday afternoon to Glen Eden, upper Titirangi and Scenic Drive. It was hoped residents in Waitarua would have water again by Monday night.
“The coastal area in south Titirangi, from Oatoru Bay down to Perkins Bay, is proving more challenging. We are starting to reconfigure the network to supply the area closer to Green Bay, but it is hard for us to get water over the ridge.”
Abigail Dougherty
A hundred-year-old kauri tumbled during the weekend’s wild weather, knocking out power for residents in Titirangi.
Bourne warned residents of the wider Titirangi area to be prepared for “intermittent water issues” over the coming days as crews located more damage to pipes.
“We can only locate these leaks as the water starts to flow through the pipes. Our crews will need to turn off the water supply for short periods of time in localised areas as they fix the damage.”
A Vector spokesperson said an update on how power restoration efforts were going would be made after a staff meeting on Monday evening.