Logs strewn over Ruby Bay road

The road at Ruby Bay was covered with logs this morning after last night’s storm and a resident is staggered the council did not take heed of their warnings to close the road and warn neighbours of potential flooding.

Nick Ferrier says he contacted the Tasman District Council yesterday morning because heavy rain was forecast to coincide with a king tide at midnight, but he heard nothing back and it was only this morning that contractors turned up to clear the road.

Nick and his wife Jenny have lived at Ruby Bay for 13 years and went through Cyclone Gita that poured 1.5m of water into their property, so know the damage that can be inflicted by storms and high tides and were nervous of last night’s storm.

“I rang the council yesterday morning and said, look I think you should close the road. We had a king tide – a 4.3 metre tide – we had this three-metre swell forecast and we had 40 knot winds gusting for six to eight hours. So, it was clear the sea was going to get up and lap on to the road. All they needed to do was put a sign either end to beware or avoid it. If it was daytime it wouldn’t have been so much of an issue.

“I was really worried about people coming along at night in the dark – there’s no streetlights there – and then suddenly have a huge pile of heavy logs in front of them. There was gravel on the road, the waves were lapping across the road. Someone could have panicked, hit the brakes and slid off into the sea.”

He said residents could have woken up in water and yesterday he warned neighbours about the possibility of flooding, but says the council should have a pre-warning system and it could be as simple as sending out a message to a group of residents.

Between 11pm and 1pm he was monitoring the tide, checking neighbours and keeping an eye on the road. Fortunately, it stopped short of flooding homes, though a couple of residents had water flowing over onto their properties.

Nick and Jenny had vehicles moved in preparation of the storm, tied equipment down, in readiness of the sea possibly coming onto their property.

“It wasn’t quite there this time. But if the wind had blown for another two to three hours and the swell would have been another half metre, we all would have been flooded.”

Nick plans to contact the council and find out why warnings were not sent out to residents or signs put on the road.

“It’s so simple, so basic. It was so obvious that the road at least was going to get logs over it.”

A council spokesperson says pre-emptive closures are used very sparingly at areas of very high risk and where hazards may not be visible to road users. Along the beachfront section of Stafford Drive, hazards would be visible and the forecast event did not warrant a pre-emptive closure.

“We not putting up signs would not have had any effect on the outcome.

“Our use of road closures is based on experience, where road users can get frustrated by what they may perceive as unnecessary road closures.”

The spokesperson says it provided a number of advance warnings to the public about the weather through its channels, including social media, website and its Antenno app, while also linking to its interactive road closures map of the region.

It has also been sharing roading and weather information from the broader channels such as Waka Kotahi/NZTA and Metservice.