Poppy and Ziggy are making a nuisance of themselves and Ursula Mayo isn’t having it.

“Shoo” she says, ushering the two shih tzu poodle cross pups outside.

“They will jump on you, but they won’t hurt you,” she says, closing the ranch slider of the two-storey home on the hill above Whakatane.

The great grandmother shuffles her bare 77-year-old feet along the wooden floorboards back to the couch.

To her left is a wooden photo frame carved into the word ‘Family’. Each letter has a photograph set into it, including some of Mayo’s 14 grandchildren.

Yet these aren’t Mayo’s photographs. This isn’t her home.

They aren’t her pots or platters stacked in the kitchen. Her beloved brown polar fleece sheets aren’t tucked away in the top of the wardrobe ready for the coming winter.

"It's still not like being in your own home,” she says, stumbling over words as she remembers the treasures she left behind - the brooch her mother gave her, adorned in pearls in a box in her bedroom; her 55-year-old son’s childhood stamp collection; her black leather boots - bought on sale in Wellington for $300 last season.

"It's difficult … you haven't got everything exactly where you want it."

BACKGROUND VIDEO: CHRIS McKEEN

Rescue workers have worked tirelessly to help residents return to their Edgecumbe homes. VIDEO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Mayo thinks back, skipping over the past fourteen days, to April 6 when she awoke ready for another day as one of Edgecumbe’s 1600 residents.

At 7.30am she was still in her pyjamas, moving around the kitchen of her first and only home and pulled a bowl out of the cupboard.

The remnants of Cyclone Debbie seemed long gone that morning. The sky seemed somehow bluer and quieter after the rain - between 200-320mm in 48 hours.

Ursula Mayo's sifts through items which she wants to claim from her home in Edgecumbe.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Ursula Mayo's sifts through items which she wants to claim from her home in Edgecumbe.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

A pleasant morning for cornflakes and yoghurt. Then the phone rang.

Residents, volunteers and supporters have been sifting through belongings discovering it is moslty now rubbish. 
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Residents, volunteers and supporters have been sifting through belongings discovering it is moslty now rubbish.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Mayo’s friend was calling to say she'd heard not to use the shower or toilet as there was a problem with the wastewater system.

Mayo says she flicked on the local radio station and heard a word not unfamiliar to long-time residents - evacuation.

She shot up to the bedroom, grabbed the first clothes she could find and ran back to the kitchen.

Ursula Mayo was itching to get back into her home to retrieve cosmetics from her bathroom cupboard.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Ursula Mayo was itching to get back into her home to retrieve cosmetics from her bathroom cupboard.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

In that time, the property she and her husband bought in 1972 to raise their six children, had changed.

Water was pouring around the sides of the house and up the front steps.

Ursula Mayo's home in Edgecumbe was left off its foundations after a force of water pummeled through Rata Ave.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Ursula Mayo's home in Edgecumbe was left off its foundations after a force of water pummeled through Rata Ave.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Mayo adjusts her glasses. It was then, she knew, she was marooned.

The water level kept rising up the fence. The street was a river.

She chucked a lead on her dog Poppy and said goodbye to her cats.

"I couldn't take them,” she says.

After living in her Rata Street home for more than 45 years, Mayo feels numb looking on it now. PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

There’s a video clip that did the rounds that day. It shows a tiny leak spurting through the concrete stopbank. The pressure from all the water must have been tremendous. When the blockade gave way, a torrent followed.

And Mayo knew she was in trouble.

She phoned her youngest daughter in Auckland, who rang another daughter, Annette, in Whakatane, who phoned husband Tautini at the dairy plant over the river from Edgecumbe.

The remains from the old flood wall and the new bank which has been formed.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

The remains from the old flood wall and the new bank which has been formed.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

"She was crying, saying mum’s stuck in the house and can't get out,” Mayo says.

"He came to get me. He spoke with people in the rescue vehicle who said they had done Rata Avenue. He said 'no you haven't my mother in-law is still there'."

Rescuers used boats, tractors and trailers to save people, even pets.

Residents, including Mayo, are ferried out of the flooded streets of Edgecumbe.
PHOTO: TAUTINI HAHIPENE

Residents, including Mayo, are ferried out of the flooded streets of Edgecumbe.
PHOTO: TAUTINI HAHIPENE

Mayo says she panicked and she knew help was on the way so she locked up and stepped out the side door. Barefoot, gripping her phone and a bundle of keys, Mayo tried to push her way through the flood, bracing herself against the side of the house.

"I realised I didn't have my phone charger so I went back, thinking I still had the keys in my hand - but I'd dropped them.

"Where they went I don't know."

Mayo’s backyard looks more like a lake than a BBQ venue now.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Mayo’s backyard looks more like a lake than a BBQ venue now.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Two wooden pallets with newly purchased portable gardens floated past her, down the driveway, out the gate and down Rata Ave.

A gas bottle, a fridge, a freezer and box of beer bobbed by.

The current was so strong it took two people to pull Mayo through the floodwater onto a trailer.

Two doors down a man in a wheelchair was dragged to safety, too. His prosthetic leg, pulled off in the force of the river, was later found wedged in the neighbour’s back fence.

Karl Stevenson found a prosthetic leg out the back of his property which belonged to his neighbour.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Karl Stevenson found a prosthetic leg out the back of his property which belonged to his neighbour.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

"It was like being in the middle of a river, absolutely unbelievable,” Mayo says.

An estimated 100,000 litres of water a second poured into the town when the stopbank burst. Rivers reached their highest peak flows on record.

Seventy per cent of the homes in Edgecumbe were affected. Those in low-lying areas, such as Mayo’s, were condemned.

The river had dropped by 11pm the following day and diggers plugged the hole.

Edgecumbe residents are left homeless and have many unanswered questions after the Rangitaiki River burst its banks. VIDEO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Returning home is a misnomer for Mayo now.

The drive from Whakatane to Edgecumbe shows no sign of the disaster that befell the inland town. The only remnant of the storm that blew through a fortnight ago is a patch of flooded field, a scattering of road cones and the odd slip.

Shops have reopened, serving up hot pies and sammies to streams of workers wearing high viz.

This could be any small town from the outside but around the corner it’s a “war zone”.

Mayo, dressed in a hygienic boiler suit, walks through the sodden mounds on the roadside toward her home - lounge suites, fridges, freezers, chairs and mud soaked mattresses.

Mayo takes a moment while walking down Rata St.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Mayo takes a moment while walking down Rata St.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Her gumboots sink into drowned grass outside a recently sold five bedroom home.

At Number 18, a block back from the College Rd stopbank, is her house.

As she enters the side door Urban Search and Rescue firefighter Bill Rackham warns her not to move around too much.

The torrent of water split the house in two, breaking every window and shifting it off its pilings.

The first thing that hits you is the smell - damp, mould, decay.

“The main force of the breach of the stopbank has come through here - affecting about 25 houses in this particular zone,” he says, motioning towards Mayo’s flooded backyard.

“It’s almost had a trenching effect. It’s taken out all the subsoils from underneath the house and undermined the footings and house foundations, which have dropped away.”

He sees stark similarities to the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

“There’re people who can’t get back into their homes. There’s hygiene issues, the devastation that exists when people lose their properties in any form of disaster.”

In the lounge, Mayo's new $5000 lounge suite is overturned onto a heap of toppled furniture. Everything is covered in silt.

A tide line on the television screen shows water more than a metre deep flowed through. The force was enough to propel a blanket box from her bedroom down the hallway into the kitchen.

A line on the wall shows how high the water got in Mayo's home.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

A line on the wall shows how high the water got in Mayo's home.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

"Even my back steps are gone. The barbecue area at the back of the house is gone. Everything in the backyard is gone. The feijoa tree. Everything."

Mayo’s half eaten bowl of cornflakes is still sitting on the table above an unrecognisable floor.

The water washed over both the ready-made double beds in the bedrooms, leaving one as though it had never been touched.

Swollen drawers sit amongst the unsalvageable pile in Mayo’s bedroom.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Swollen drawers sit amongst the unsalvageable pile in Mayo’s bedroom.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Blue fluffy mould has sprouted behind the dresser drawers.

"The clothing, you couldn't take it. I've got no clothes, nothing," Mayo says.

In the wardrobe, there’s a velvet jacket with lace trim. "It's probably 20 years old, it comes back into fashion."

An old violin case got shunted into Mayo’s bedroom. PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Mayo and her husband were sharemilking in Otakiri when he got a job in Edgecumbe 45 years ago.

They saved a deposit and bought this two-year-old weatherboard home.

"We'd never had a house of our own, being in a farm cottage - this place was a palace.

"We did a lot of work on it - we put up fences, got a garage. After the earthquake we put in a driveway."

Graffiti lays down the law for residents.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Graffiti lays down the law for residents.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Born and bred in the Rangitaiki Plains, Mayo has experienced natural disasters - the floods of 2004 and the 1987 Edgecumbe earthquake.

This flood was the worst.

"The only thing we had to do after the earthquake was pack one pile on the corner of the house in the front.

"Everything inside had come out of the cupboards but it wasn't like a flood where everything was covered in mud, wet and yuck."

Objects that were once familiar are no longer recognisable.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Objects that were once familiar are no longer recognisable.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Mayo makes her way around the house, salvaging any possessions.

“Oh my shoes, my good shoes,” she says examining her belongings.

“It’s just awful. What are the books like?” she asks.

A few boxes of blankets, unwrapped photo frames and kitchen platters are loaded into boxes and taken outside by family members who’re chipping in.

“Oh, my hairbrush, I want that.”

A volunteer opened an abandoned fridge sitting on the verge to see what was inside.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

A volunteer opened an abandoned fridge sitting on the verge to see what was inside.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

The shed remains off-limits. Inside, the deep freezes have been overturned spilling homekill meat onto the concrete delivering a treat for roaming dogs.

Karl Stevenson hadn't realised how much of a mess his property was in after the flood tore through his place. PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Across the road at Karl and Bev Stevenson’s place there’s none of Mayo’s upbeat mood and radical acceptance. Instead, there’s frustration, stress and anger.

Bev Stevenson hasn’t been sleeping well since the flood.

She can still hear the screams of the children trapped in a van on their way to school.

“It was the most terrifying thing I’ve been through, I thought I was going to die,” she says, as she paces around, gumboots sloshing in the mud of her backyard.

The mother of two was home alone when she heard the “bang” of the stopbank bursting.

She can’t face talking about it, so her husband takes over.

“She rung me in hysterics, saying the river is running through our house. It’s gone through your shed, it’s going through the house.”

Rebuilding Edgecumbe will take time.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Rebuilding Edgecumbe will take time.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

His advice - shut down the power and prepare to be rescued.

“I drove down roads that were closed, I had water over my bonnet at times, trying to get in but got held up by police.

“By the time I got to the stopbank I could see all the water flowing through the side, and her coming out on the truck.”

The couple spent five days straight hauling their water-logged furniture and possessions onto the pavement.

They’ve stripped the carpets and torn down walls.

They’ve lost a cat, five turtles and “hundreds of fish” from the pond in the backyard.

Someone’s teddy ended up face down on a clothes line.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Someone’s teddy ended up face down on a clothes line.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

The house is now a shell, Karl Stevenson says, as he moves his fingers around the paper of a roll-your-own cigarette.

He quit smoking before the flood, but the stress made him light up again.

“It’s very stressful and your emotions change, they go up and down. I have never felt so tired at night, emotionally drained.

“Most nights we’re in bed by half eight and we’re usually here by eight in the morning. The first two days we didn’t have anything to eat.

“Photos and mementos are gone, all our wedding stuff, you keep finding more that you didn’t realise was gone.

“The house is completely bare now, the only thing in the house is a table,” he says.

Flooded appliances and household junk await collection.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Flooded appliances and household junk await collection.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

It’s Edgecumbe’s second flood in 15 years.

Edgecumbe's stop bank has now been upgraded. PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Many residents are angry. Some vented their anger at a public meeting, held days after the event, at a perceived lack of planning, prevention and communication from councils and Civil Defence.

Machinery and manpower combine to clean the streets.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Machinery and manpower combine to clean the streets.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Questions were also raised over the Matahina Dam and why more water wasn't released prior to the days of heavy rain.

"Stopbanks in the eastern Bay are designed for a one-in-100 year event. At their peak, river flows were more than 30 per cent larger than this," flood manager Peter Blackwood told media briefings in the days that followed.

An inquiry has been commissioned to find out what happened to the stopbank.

It’s little consolation for Karl Stevenson. The house, bought 12 years ago, was also his workshop. The backyard and garage were strewn with spare classic car parts.

His latest projects were an Austin and a Valiant with a “mint interior”. Neither will be covered by insurance.

The Valiant just needed a paint job and it would have been worth $25,000-$30,000.

Four motorcycles have already been sent to his father’s to be stripped down.

“I’ve got too much to try and save and time is of the essence now. I really need to finish it so I can get back to work next week.”

He’s been working through the cleanup with a broken finger, but a nurse told him it won’t be healing because of the stress levels.

The new stop bank separating town and river.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

The new stop bank separating town and river.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

The couple are also worried they won’t get the full payout of their $50,000 contents insurance.

Insurance assessors had been late to the party, Karl Stevenson says, and only arrived to investigate the damage on the Wednesday after they were allowed back in.

“They need to wake up and realise the Rangitaiki went through our homes,” Bev Stevenson says.

“They were meant to be here yesterday but they were too busy. How come the building inspectors got in here before them?”

Waste removal containers line the streets of Edgecumbe.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Waste removal containers line the streets of Edgecumbe.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

They’ve received a $200 clothing allowance, but it’s “not a lot for two people”.

“The clothes I’m wearing are from social welfare. Nobody owns anything, every single flat down here has lost everything.”

Like many in the town the couple have taken up refuge with friends, workmates and family while the cleanup continues.

Dozens of volunteers have assembled to help clean up the streets.

Equipped in white hazardous suits, gloves and gumboots, they work their way through a list of houses.

“It’s like the United Nations out there,” Ngati Awa volunteer army site manager Jake Smyth says.

Volunteers remove a heavy, soaked pool table.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

Volunteers remove a heavy, soaked pool table.
PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

“Most are local but we have had people from Tauranga, Auckland, a couple from Germany who were backpackers in New Plymouth and heard about the flood and came up here straight away to help. We’ve had a woman from Japan, from Brazil.”

“When they come in you can tell who the new people are because you can hear them sighing in awe of what are they seeing.”

Drenched carpet is destined for the tip. PHOTO: CHRISTEL YARDLEY

While there’s a long road ahead, the Stevensons are staying put. They're on the hunt for a cheap caravan to park on the lawn while they re-do the house they shared with two daughters. But that won't be until the insurance pays out.

The prospect of returning to Number 18 is too much for Mayo. She now plans to use the insurance money to buy a home in Whakatane.

She's already found a prospect - a tidy red and yellow three bedroom home on Hawera St - close enough to walk to the shops, enough room for the grandkids and a five minute drive to Annette's. It’s also well off the floodplain.

Reporting
Phillipa Yalden

Visuals
Christel Yardley

Copy editing
Matt Bowen

Design and layout
Aaron Wood