Mangere flood victims say government help lacking

Two South Auckland families are crying out for government help two months on from the Auckland floods.

Joel Tamati of Māngere says his extended family have received no help despite losing everything in the flood waters that contaminated their home.

When they approached the government, they were told to continue living in the contaminated property, despite it being stickered as uninhabitable.

“Our entire family has done more for them than the government has,” says Tamati.

Another member of the family, who wishes to remain unnamed, agrees the government response has been disappointing for whole neighbourhood.

The flood water rendered most of the houses, their contents and vehicles unusable and inhabitable. And for many in the area, insurance coverage is too expensive.

“We unfortunately don’t have insurance cover on anything, so we’ve had to go to the government for assistance, which hasn’t been very helpful, and due to the amount of people affected in this neighbourhood alone, it hasn’t helped our situation.

“We’re just lucky that we have family that took us in, so we didn’t have to continue to live in an unsafe house.”

Tamati believes that a potential solution to preventing future incidents like this would be for the local council to fix the wastewater and sewage systems.

“The sewage system in the neighbourhood isn’t very good as it gets blocked and flooded regularly. For my family, it was trying to prepare and predict how badly it was going to affect them. I don’t think they predicted that they would lose basically everything, though.”

He is calling on the government to do more for those that don’t have content insurance to help them get back on their feet and to do so in a more supportive and speedy manner.