On Thursday 20th June 2013, Wellington was hit by a massive storm. We were all a bit shaken afterwards. Here in Eastbourne the storm made its presence felt; with high waves, strong winds, trees and branches down, fences flattened, houses damaged, windows smashed, schools closed, power cuts and that is just some of the results from the storm. They are saying the storm was worse than the storm than the storm that bought the Wahine down in 1968.
It started with wind and rain, then the lights began to flicker. Suddenly everything went black, the power went out! Luckily we had lots of candles and camping gear. Dad filled up containers with water, just to be on the safe side. We had torches and lots of spare batteries.
As there was no power, we lit candles and played games. Then we heated water in a kettle on our camping stove for a hot drink. Luckily we had had dinner before the power went off. Dad got the radio out of our emergency kit, so we could listen to updates and what was happening around the Wellington region.
My little brother was too scared to sleep in his room by himself, so I let him sleep in my room on the floor. All night long we could hear the wind blowing and the windows rattling. It was hard to get to sleep but eventually we did. In the morning we still had no power. Muritai School was shut along with lots of other schools in Wellington. My older brothers’ school, Scots Collage was open so my dad drove him in to school.
On the way to Scots Collage they saw all the destruction that the storm had caused and they said it was really bad. They said a few houses inDays Bay were flooded. My dad said that Muritai Road was closed because there were cracks in the road, rocks scattered all over the road, trees and branches everywhere and it was high tide, so the road was too dangerous to drive on. It took dad ages to take Tom to school and get back home again. There were accidents on the motorway and the bad weather slowed everyone down. Luckily my dad got back safely!
Dad drove us down to have a look around Eastbourne to see the damage the storm had caused. There were people everywhere; some looking around like us and others’ starting the job of cleaning up. People were cleaning up rocks and trees at their homes and around our community. Lots of people were walking around looking at the damage that had occurred through the night.
For breakfast I had Up & Go. We put a bag of ice in the fridge to keep everything cold while the power was out. After breakfast we decided to play board games. Dad managed to get our gas stove working so we had homemade vegetable soup for lunch, which mum made the day before. We played more games until about 1:00pm. We didn’t really do anything after that. Then at 1:15pm the power came back on!
Over the next few days the weather started to get better, the sea calmed down and there were blue skies with a few white fluffy clouds.
Even though we had no power it was actually kind of fun! It’s certainly a storm I will remember.
By Brianna
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