The trouble with islands is that, as isolated communtities, when things go wrong they go more wrong. Winter set in during the first week of July with several storms in succession. During the first there was a power cut just as I was about to go to bed. I wasn’t really prepared, it was a cold night and I rely on electricity for heating. I had taken out the near to useless chip heater and replaced it with a much needed pantry. And of course with tank water pumped up to the house by an electric pump, as soon as the power goes there is no water as well as no heating. No hot water either. Well, there is a cylinder full of hot below the house, but it can’t be pumped up to the taps. So, bang and there’s no heat, no drinks, no bath or shower, no water to clean your teeth, no flushing the toilet, no charging up the cellphone. At least I have a landline phone that doesn’t rely on electricity. I went outside in the dark, pouring rain, taking a bucket to fill up from the garden tank. Then tired and fed up, I went to bed early. By morning the power was back on, although not for people down at the beach where the dairy owner was very worried about melting food in their freezer.
A week or so later an even more violent storm was predicted. In the meantime Annie had got me a camping gas stove and Paul had showed me how to load the cylinder. I filled up a thermos of tea in the late afternoon as the wind and rain picked up. And another thermos of hot water for the hot water bottle. I cooked tea early and made sure there was food around that didn’t need heating. I filled a large container in the bath, put a bucket in the toilet, charged up my cellphone and iPad, set out a lot of candles and sure enough, bang and everything went out. Being more prepared was reassuring. The evening was spent reading a library book on the iPad and occasionally listening to the news on my cellphone radio. Cannot get internet through my home provision, reliant on electricity but can get it via cellular links on phone and iPad. I found the Waiheke community Facebook page very reassuring as it was full of news about what was going on, as well as about how people were reacting and coping. Fortunately my house is very sheltered, being part way down a valley, so no trees were coming down. The wind was certainly howling though.
In the morning I was due to catch an early ferry into town as I had a day’s work (broke my resolution already, but only four days in total! Hardly unretiring.) Somehow I couldn’t be bothered with all the fuss, so I rolled out of bed in the dark into my clothes (prepared by candlelight the night before) and drove off showerless and breakfast less. The ferry wasn’t the place to get a cup of tea as it was quite rough and people were grimly huddled together on the smaller boat, the big one having its winter refit. So, breakfast at work, stayed the night at Annie’s and enjoyed power and shower…and the news was that Waiheke was without power right through the day, 24 hours in all for my neighbourhood, even longer for others. We seem to get quite a raw deal compared to Aucklanders even though we’re more reliant on power because of the water situation .
So, a week or two later, yet another storm, this time not too windy and no power cut. But at breakfast time I looked out the kitchen window and was horrified to see water pouring down the driveway and into the carport, overwhelming the drains. Got out there with Annie, who proved a hero with the oar sticking down the drainpipe method of clearing stormwater drains. Alerted my neighbour John that his garage was about to flood, and when we cleared his drain, the extra flow overwhelmed all the good work we’d done with ours. The neighbour from the cottage below drove up on the way to seek help from the council. Water was roaring down from John’s place through my place and flooding him. He’d already dug a temporary drain messily in the lawn right at the corner of my house (Dad’s legacy which Rene had warned me about, garden water tank and laundry built over the boundary at the time when they owned both properties, true Waiheke style.)
We began to realise that our efforts were all ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and moved up the road to tackle the problem of blocked council drains up there and that solved the problem, at least till next time.
All of which makes me realise that I do need to be a rugged islander not a soft city slicker.
Island Time of Life 