McEnroe and his mangled digger worth about $80,000. Photo: RNZ / Mary Argue
Byron McEnroe is counting his blessings despite the complete destruction of an uninsured $80,000 digger.
As the storm battered Tasman last week, the torrent of water and slash picked up the massive machine and sent it tumbling down his rural block.
The digger cut a path through his property, where only a month ago a friend had been staying in a motorhome.
"For the last five years we had an old guy living in a motorhome just here on the other side of the digger, and moved him out about a month ago - pretty happy about that, because I don't think he would have survived," McEnroe said.
"This all happened in the dark, that digger would have been coming through the side of his little bus before he even knew about it. So, it could've been worse."
It was the second time the Tasman district had been battered by torrential rain in a fortnight.
Residents in the Motueka Valley were shell-shocked by the destruction after record rainfall once again triggered a state of emergency.
McEnroe fought back tears as he surveyed the damage left by Friday's deluge.
"The rain was just unreal, the water and the power of it... it's terrible."
He suspected forestry logs from a block up behind his driveway had become stuck in what was normally a trickle of a creek bed - and like in many other parts of Tasman - built up a lake of water behind it.
Parrish Hurley next to what was once a "trickle" of a stream. Photo: RNZ / Mary Argue
"[It] just exploded and came down in a big hurry."
The flash-flood that was released gouged out the earth - 6m deep in some places - and sent his five-tonne uninsured digger spinning 100m downhill in a cascade of silt and debris that ran for hundreds of metres more.
"Completely written it off, and I need it now... now more than ever. I don't really know what I'm going to do about it yet, it's got no future there."
McEnroe grew up in the valley, and had lived there for more than a decade after returning as an adult. He was still struggling to come to grips with what had happened, and was visibly relieved the carnage was not fatal.
The trail of debris that cascaded through McEnroe's property and across the road started in a forestry block up the back. Photo: RNZ / Mary Argue
The recent rainfall had sent the whole district back to square one, undoing all the effort and work to repair the damage caused by widespread flooding two weeks ago, McEnroe said.
"So much hard work, all just gone - it's worse this time. People's mental health will be deteriorating pretty bad at the moment. That's the biggest worry, but you got to keep your chin up and carry on."
Since Friday's deluge, he had been working furiously to repair the driveway to his mother's property just north of Ngātīmoti, after a flash-flood carrying boulders and forestry logs cut off access to her a kilometre from her home.
Monday was the first time his mum - who was in her 70s - had seen people in days, McEnroe said.
Byron McEnroe and friend Parrish Hurley have spent the past couple of days working to repair the driveway to McEnroe's mother's house. Photo: RNZ / Mary Argue
Friend and fourth-generation local Parrish Hurley suspected the clean-up this time would take months, if not years, and the scale of it was hard to comprehend. The last two hours of rain sealed their fate, he said.
"The devastation is incredible, when people actually get to see it. It's all very well flying over in a helicopter, but it's nothing like being on the ground and looking at it, and being amongst it first hand. It's unbelievable."
Despite the mess in front of him, Hurley said many others were worse off, pointing out a farmer across the road who had lost "half the back of his farm" when the Motueka River burst its banks.
"[That] was a paddock, where he used to run his sheep .. and now it's just gone. Totally gone.
"It's not going to be a quick fix. People are already on their hands and knees because they're struggling with the economy and everything, and I just don't believe a lot of people have got money left in their pockets to fix things up."
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