put under a State of Emergency<\/a> about 3am Sunday, with some residents saying they received civil defence phone alerts to evacuate after 4am.<\/p>\nAbout 18 people spent the night in \u014chura Memorial Hall, including some tourists who were stranded.<\/p>\n
Swathes of farmland were still inundated on Sunday evening and the \u014chura main town centre was flooded throughout.<\/p>\n
Ruapehu Mayor Weston Kirton said while Horizons Regional Council had warned farmers heavy rain could affect their land and livestock, it eventually turned out the bigger impact was on the town centre, where there were houses close to the Mangaroa River.<\/p>\n
“Not only did the township suffer from flooding – because it’s not well protected with any stopbanks of note, so they basically get done like a dinner,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And it’s unfortunate that a lot of houses are affected by it, in this case people were like chest high, taking young children out for example, and crossing over railway bridges to get into safe ground, and this was 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.”<\/p>\n
![\"Flooded](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4JPXKKM_20260419_105002_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nFlooded farmland in \u014chura on Sunday.
\nPhoto: Supplied\/ Ross Perry\n<\/p>\n
Kirton said some people had to make the call to self-evacuate. And around the same time that he became aware of the situation and declared a State of Emergency, some families were already wading out of their flooded homes with water up to their chests.<\/p>\n
“It’s difficult sometimes, particularly during the night to ascertain what’s going on, the answer regarding warnings concerns – I think we can do better there,” he said.<\/p>\n
Kirton said on Sunday afternoon he went with civil defence minister Mark Mitchell for an aerial survey of the flood impact in \u014chura.<\/p>\n
The hill country and pastures were still flooded, particularly the valleys, he said.<\/p>\n
Some farmlands were inaccessible due to slips.<\/p>\n
There had been livestock loss, but Kirton said it was too early to know the extent of the losses.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flooding at the old garage in \u014chura’s town centre on Sunday. A local resident said by the time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-389058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389058","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=389058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Flooding](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4JPXMLP_20260419_100610_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n