Cyclone Gabrielle wreaked havoc on much of New Zealand on the 13th of Feb, that night the Muriwai Community was forever changed.
10 a.m. on 14 February: This was as close as we were able to get to the Lodge the day after the storm hit. We had been evacuated around midnight the night before from our home, as were our guests and tenants at the Lodge. We, and all of the Lodge dwellers, were safe...incredibly when we began to see the devastation all around us. The storm the night before had been terrifying in its intensity - the torrential rain, the howling wind...the sound of the Muriwai hillsides collapsing and sweeping away homes and trees. Roads were closed and blocked by debris...our community was in shock as we waited for word on whether the two firefighters trapped in this slip had survived.
Over the following days people managed to find a way to the Lodge to capture what had happened there, sending through photos and videos...the debris flow across approximately a third of the Lodge site was huge. Our tenants in some of the destroyed cabins lost everything. But the destruction was fickle - hitting some places hard and completely missing the land right alongside.
