THE impacts of wet weather spread north this weekend, with visitors of the Ōtorohanga New Zealand Motor Caravan Association (NZMCA) park evacuated on Friday night.
National manager of property and policy James Imlach said the decision was made by local park custodians to instruct all campers to leave because of the impending bad weather.
“With the weather bomb that hit they made the decision for members safety to evacuate the park.
“We know that in heavy rain the park can flood so it can be difficult getting in and out.”
The NZMCA park on Waipā Esplanade, Ōtorohanga, was completely underwater and inaccessible after the Waipā River flooded.
The park is not protected by the stopbanks which were constructed in response to the 1958 floods that caused about $21 million of damage in today’s money to
Ōtorohanga properties, according to NIWA.
James said it was not a concern to NZMCA that it operated a park that was flood prone, and in fact many of its parks around the country had some form of flooding hazard.
Its members were used to having to move on in storms.
“Although this site does flood when there’s heavy rain, it doesn’t flood like this as frequently as it would need to for us to become concerned by it.
“If it happened every week then it would be cause for concern, but it’s not that regular that we feel we have any major issues with it.”
