Families airlifted to safety as New Zealand declares rare national emergency

A national emergency has been announced by New Zealand’s government in the wake of cyclone Gabrielle, that prime minister Chris Hipkins has termed the “most significant weather event New Zealand has seen in this century”.

The cyclone has wreaked havoc in the country’s north by causing widespread flooding and destruction, leading to forced evacuations, several flight cancellations, road closures and widespread power outages, with no electricity for nearly 60,000 homes, local media reported.

This is only the third time a national emergency has been declared in New Zealand. Earlier a nationwide emergency was imposed during the COVID pandemic and the Christchurch attack in 2019.

It covers New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, that lies in a heavily affected region that had barely recovered from the extensive damage wrought by extreme flooding and record rain last month, the Independent reported.

Prime minister Chris Hipkins called the cyclone the “most significant weather event New Zealand has seen in this century”, adding that the military was on the ground, helping with evacuations and keeping essential supplies moving.

Overnight, intense rainfall lashed northern areas after the tropical cyclone made landfall on Sunday, leaving over 225,000 people without power and leading to forced evacuations and road closures.

Officials said one firefighter has been missing and another sustained critical injuries after they were caught in a landslide near Auckland.

Residents said the scale of the disaster is something rare, with flooding taking out houses and roads.

“I’ve seldom seen anything like it,” architect Lars von Minden, 50, who lives in the beach town of Muriwai told Reuters.

“There are three or four areas where there are just these massive slips, some of them 300 meters across, that have come down, taking out houses and roads and everything.”