This week Wellington saw a lot of rain, so much rain in fact, that part of Wellington experienced some serious flooding. Apparently, around this time of the year right after summer the region gets a few big first rainfalls. The amount of rain that fell on Thursday, however, was a once in 100 year event. The Lower Hutt got hit pretty bad including Petone and Porirua. Around 1pm there were already cars completely submerged.
A lot of people that work in central Wellington live in the Hutt area including a few people I work with at Fork & Brewer. They either depend on the train or the motorway to get home - the flooding blocked both of these. There were also minor landslides that blocked even more roads. The Fork & Brewer ended up being pretty busy because of all the people stuck in the city.
There was one fatality, an 80 year old man that was found in the water near his car. The worst flood to hit Wellington happened in 1976 and caused $30 million in damage. Fortunately, there wasn't a large loss of life and happened to be only one fatality in that one too.
I happened to be working so I snagged these images from the Dominion Post.
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| MATT DUNCAN/Dominion Post |
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| DAVID MORRISON |
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| ANDREA MALTHOUSE |
