South Auckland Tornado - Community Spirit in the aftermath

On Saturday the 19th of June, a freak tornado wreaked havoc through Papatoetoe in South Auckland tearing through homes, shattering roofs and uprooting trees. It killed one man, contractor Janesh Prasad, and injured at least two others.

Jordyn Makiha and Rob Pome'e shared clips in the video above showing some of the devastation to Jordyn's family home and damage to cars and houses in Rob's neighbourhood.

Many residents were without power for at least two nights but they didn't want to leave their homes in case things went missing from their property.  Some families sent their children to stay with relatives where they could, until the power was restored.  

Freyberg resident Taulagi Momoiseā thought she was going to die when the tornado hit, thinking the house was about to collapse.  She was so traumatised she wouldn't go back into the house and stayed with her grand-daughter in Otara until the power in their house was back on.

More than a week after the tornado, residents of Papatoetoe say that it's the community spirit and aroha/alofa of neighbours, friends, family and volunteers that have helped get them through the traumatic time.  Neighbours, friends, family, school groups and social clubs have also contributed to helping with the massive clean up which is still on-going.

"We mostly had to sort our own tarpaulins and cover our roofs ourselves.  The fire service provided one big tarpaulin but because residents couldn't go in or out on the street they had to rely on friends & relatives to buy tarps and help secure the tarps on roofs." said Janina Lauitiiti 

Rob Pome'e from Three Houses Down said his house wasn't too badly damaged but his neighbourhood really pulled together.  His brother Charlie also donated a couple of skips which he said filled up within less than an hour of them getting to Papatoe.

"I had families and friends who pulled in to help restore my house and got some of my workers to help out some of our neighbours cleaning up. 

It's definitely given us a sense of community feel with everyone helping each other and coming together.  For some neighbours it's the first time they've met each other.  Some have lived on the street for 14+ years like ourselves." Rob said.

Rob said the first people on the scene were the Sikh and Punjab community and their church.

Papatoetoe residents Janina Lauititti and Carla Makiha also had high praise for the work that the Sikh community and other volunteers from South Auckland did in the immediate aftermath of the tornado.

"I tell everyone this, the Sikh community man, they turned up!  They were offering hot drinks and food Saturday and Sunday and then on Saturday night they turned up and also gave us lights, battery operated LED lights, gave us basic necessities like bread, butter, peanut butter, jam plus hot curry and roti.  We were blessed like that because obviously we had no power so the Sikh community were so sweet, checking in on everybody to see if anybody needed food or hot drinks"  said Janina.

"We had the Elim church come through immediately, the Sikh community, members from the Papatoetoe Panthers (Rugby League Club) came through and our own street people, our Freyberg people.  We all rallied for each other.  Our street, we went from 'Oh my goodness' to 'OK, right!  Where do we prioritise? What do you need doing?'  People who weren't affected down the far end, were down here helping us. 

The fire service were amazing in particular Shrimp and Bruce Clarkson.  They insisted on having the power board come down and physically check the wires.  Alf Filipaina was brilliant he came down and tried to get things moving as much as he could in the interim"  added Carla 

From the local council level, there were skips and organics pick-ups organised to help with the clean up of trees, branches, debris and alumninum that littered the streets.  Treescape also came through to help chew up trees and branches.  Residents just had to put what they wanted to be picked up, out on the front berm.

Social services were also set up at the Allan Brewster Recreation Centre with Red Cross volunteers, MSD agents, community workers and more helping people fill out emergency housing applications, assistance forms and in some cases sending out teams to help families or houses that were in need of help getting tarpaulins up.

"Amazing, so much love, care and respect up there" said one resident.

For Carla Makiha and other residents, while they feel the community response has been amazing, the wait for house insurance assesors has been extremely frustrating.  Some have had to wait 4 or 5 days for the assessors to come out to their properties.

Carla's house was one of the worst hit on Freyberg Ave with the front of her house ripped away in the tornado and she also had a power pole fall on one of her cars.  

"It's not like extreme weather like this doesn't happen in New Zealand, it does happen and insurance companies need to up their game.  Stop passing the buck to contractors and deal with the people who are paying them." she said. 

On Thursday last week she was still waiting on the Contents insurance asessors to come out and do an asessment and to see whether any of the contents of their home are salvageable.

In regards to her house, a building asessor finally came down from Whangarei to do the asessment and they'd initially thought it'd take maybe days or weeks to find out about their building.  She said it'll be more like months.  In the meantime, the Salvation Army helped them into emergency accommodation for a couple of nights and they were able to book themselves into a motel but as she said "life goes on" and they couldn't afford that plus their mortgage and bills to be paid on top of this, so she went in to see about more permanent emergency housing for her and her family as their house is deemed uninhabitable for now.

She feels that insurance companies should have learned from what has happened with the earthquake disasters in Christchurch.  

"My heart goes out to the Christchurch people that are still going through this, I just can't imagine because that's now our journey.  We'll be seeing the same heartache and the same devastation"  

Many residents were also frustrated to find that nobody from insurance companies worked over the weekends to take calls.  "Do they think natural disasters only happen during the week?" said one resident.

"Our cars got sorted really fast, I called them and they were booked in first thing on Monday for the glass and then they had also booked them in to assessors today" - Janina said

With the housing assessors there were a lot of no shows with insurance companies saying they'd call or send someone on Monday but then residents didn't hear from them until at least Tuesday.  Two building asessors finally came out and we've had three different windows people come through and quote up our windows for insurance so things are looking a bit more promising now."

Carla added that it was disappointing that it was so hard to find accommodation for her and her family in motels and hotels in South Auckland due to most of the South Auckland hotels being taken up as MIQ accommodation.

"Free up the MIQ accommodation for the residents of Papatoetoe.  We are hitting roadblocks because they've blocked out places for MIQ.  So we get shipped into the city - that's what we're looking at is going into the city because they're blocking everything southside for MIQ.  

Move them into the city.  Leave us in our community because children have their homes ripped away from them and now you're ripping their community away from them by moving them out.  I get that everyone doing the right things, their hands are tied but the government can pull some strings and release that MIQ housing out south"  - Carla 

Stuff have reported that twenty two houses have been deemed uninhabitable and entry is restricted to sixty houses as they are unsafe to be in for long periods of time.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the Government will support any additional top-ups needed for the Mayoral Relief Fund set up to help families in the aftermath of the tornado.

205 applications have been recieved by the Ministry of Social Development's disaster reliefe fund and Mayor Phil Goff has stated that people impacted by the tornado don't need to be on the benefit to be eligible to apply.

Currently, 93 people are in emergency accommodation, but from this week on there is work underway to help people into longer term accommodation as their houses are getting fixed.

"This is Auckland, it's 2021, we're resilient and we've gotta do stuff ourselves and that's what it goes back to - that's what our community are doing for ourselves.  This is for love, everyone is doing this for the amount of aroha they have on our street.  Nothing else, so that ... that's what I'm thankful for." - Carla Makiha

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A relief fund for victims of the Auckland tornado has doubled to $200,000.

Auckland Council and the government have contributed $100,000 each to help tornado-stricken families recover from the freak storm.  The money is for people who need immediate help until they can access longer term help.

Applications to the Mayoral Relief Fund can be made online or by calling Auckland Council on 09 301 0101.

Anyone who would like to donate to the Mayoral Relief Fund can do so by making a deposit to:

Auckland Council

12 3113 0131166 00

Reference: Tornado