{"id":347508,"date":"2026-03-25T18:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T18:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/347508\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T18:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T18:57:08","slug":"live-heavy-rain-lashes-upper-north-island-rescue-crews-prepare-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/347508\/","title":{"rendered":"Live: Heavy rain lashes upper North Island, rescue crews prepare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fire and Emergency is urging residents in storm-affected areas to be ready to evacuate if necessary, following a night of heavy rain.<\/p>\n<p>A red weather warning remains in place for Northland east of Kaikohe from Doubtless Bay to Whang\u0101rei, with the worst of the downpours expected to hit on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Marae in the region have been opened for those in need of support, and Fire and Emergency has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/590630\/specialist-rescue-crews-deployed-to-storm-battered-regions\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">deployed 19 specialist rescue personnel<\/a> to Northland and Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>MetService said the heaviest rain and largest volumes were likely to be in the upper North Island, from Northland to western Bay of Plenty.<\/p>\n<p>Downpours, flooding, and slips were also possible on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Fire and Emergency assistant national commander Ken Cooper warned residents in upper parts of Northland to be ready in case the situation deteriorated.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For that upper part of Northland, the intelligence we&#8217;ve got is there&#8217;s a large amount of rainfall over a very short period of time. I would certainly advise people to be prepared, if they&#8217;re in low lying areas or near rivers, be prepared to move.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cooper said anyone concerned about a risk to life or property should call 111.<\/p>\n<p>Northland Civil Defence expected the worst of the rain to hit the northeast coast on Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on social media, it warned residents not to go into flood water, to avoid unnecessary travel, and to be aware of slips.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Leave immediately if you notice cracks in the ground, leaning trees or power poles, unusual sounds, or sudden changes in streams,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>Follow the latest updates in our live blog above.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/radionz.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=211a938dcf3e634ba2427dde9&amp;id=b3d362e693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fire and Emergency is urging residents in storm-affected areas to be ready to evacuate if necessary, following a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-347508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}