3 dead as heavy rains hit New Zealand

At least three peo­ple were killed and one miss­ing after ‘record rains’ hit New Zealand’s biggest city on Friday.

Auck­land is said to have record­ed 75% of its nor­mal sum­mer rain­fall in just 15 hours.

Author­i­ties have declared a state of emer­gency in the city to deal with evac­u­a­tions and wide­spread flooding.

New Zealand Prime Min­is­ter Chris Hip­kins thanked emer­gency ser­vices for their prompt response to the disaster.

The new Prime Min­is­ter vis­it­ed Auck­land to offer con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of those who died in the floods.

“The loss of life under­scores the mag­ni­tude of this weath­er event and the speed of its tragedy,” he said at a press con­fer­ence Sat­ur­day afternoon.

The tor­ren­tial rains flood­ed the air­port, washed away homes and caused pow­er out­ages for sev­er­al hours.

New Zealand Defense Forces were mobi­lized to assist in the evac­u­a­tion and emer­gency shel­ters were set up in the city.

Auck­land Greens MP Ricar­do Menen­dez-Murch told the BBC that he had to evac­u­ate after the area he lived in was quick­ly flood­ed, but a close friend of his made the deci­sion to evac­u­ate. He said he gave it to me.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some peo­ple were not, such as low-income peo­ple, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, and immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Images post­ed online showed peo­ple waist-deep in water and res­cuers kayak­ing to escape. There were also videos of food items float­ing in the aisles of sev­er­al flood­ed supermarkets.

Inter­na­tion­al flight depar­tures from Auck­land Air­port were sus­pend­ed until at least 05:00 local time on Sun­day, and no inter­na­tion­al flights were allowed to arrive before 07:00.

The Auck­land City Emer­gency Man­age­ment Author­i­ty (AEM) has announced a shift in focus from evac­u­a­tion to cleanup efforts after the rain.

He also tweet­ed, ‘Don’t let the word ‘rainy today’ fool you into plan­ning your week­end outing.

The Bureau of Mete­o­rol­o­gy said wors­en­ing weath­er is fore­cast for Auck­land through Tuesday.

The coun­try’s cli­mate sci­ence agency, the Nation­al Insti­tute of Water and Atmos­phere (NIWA), said sev­er­al spots in Auck­land saw record rain­fall on Fri­day. Heavy rain was expect­ed in sev­er­al parts of the city for at least the next five days.

“It goes with­out say­ing that cli­mate change will make these events more fre­quent and that cities like Auck­land are not well pre­pared,” said March.

Cli­ma­tol­o­gists cau­tion against attribut­ing cer­tain weath­er events to cli­mate change, but a NIWA study reveals that glob­al warm­ing is caus­ing more extreme weath­er in New Zealand.