declared a state of emergency<\/a> for the southern and eastern wards of the capital after MetService issued a Heavy Swell Warning for Cape Terawhiti to Turakirae Head in Wellington and Turakirae Head to Mataikona in Wairarapa.<\/p>\nA southerly weather system moving up the country is bringing the swells to Cook Strait from Monday night through to Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
A mandatory evacuation order has been issued for waterfront properties, covering about 350 homes from \u014cwhiro to Breaker bays – excluding Lyall Bay.<\/p>\n
Residents must leave before 9am on Tuesday and have been told to expect extensive road closures.<\/p>\n
Wellington City Civil Defence controller Phil Becker said the swell was expected to be larger than one that hit in 2021.<\/p>\n
“Back then, water was sloshing against the fronts of houses, and rocks and timber debris … was cast up on some of those houses as well.<\/p>\n
“So, it’s just not safe for people to stay.”<\/p>\n
One Breaker Bay resident told RNZ her home had never been hit in the three decades she’d lived there, but said she expected most people to evacuate.<\/p>\n
Raymond Morgan, however, said he was only leaving his Breaker Bay home because he had somewhere to be on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
“The mayors often say, ‘We’d rather be safe than sorry’, and that’s all well and good, but there’s an impact on people’s lives when you say, ‘You must evacuate’.<\/p>\n
“Because people have to go to places – they have pets, they have dependent children and things like that, which is quite disruptive for people’s lives.”<\/p>\n
Morgan said his biggest concern was coastal erosion and didn’t expect his house to suffer any damage.<\/p>\n
“I might eat my words but I don’t think so. I’ve lived here for 12 years and there’s been nothing that’s threatened my house.”<\/p>\n
A resident in \u014cwhiro Bay planned to stay put because he has a two-storey house, but said he’d be keeping an eye on swell data from a buoy off the coast of Christchurch.<\/p>\n
He said the swell data down south reaches Wellington several hours later.<\/p>\n
“If it’s a 10m [swell] they’re reading I know that can be quite dangerous. I’m thinking I’ll be fine but there’s other people I’ll be quite worried about.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure they will move, but I’ll be going and seeing them anyway.”<\/p>\n
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":"\u014cwhiro Bay, along Wellington’s south coast, in 2022. Photo: RNZ \/ Dom Thomas The deadline is looming for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467215,"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-467214","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\/467214","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=467214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\u014cwhiro](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/4M85SQQ_copyright_image_267699.jpeg\")
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