Thousands of people in New Zealand are without power as parts of the country face the onset of severe storms.
Gabrielle struck Australia’s Norfolk Island overnight and began pounding New Zealand’s northernmost region.
Forecasters have issued a “red” wind and rain warning for Auckland and Northland with up to 200mm of rain and gusts of up to 130km/h (80mph).
Evacuation centers have been set up and residents are preparing.
They have been asked to ensure that they have enough supplies for three days if they are stranded at home.
The storm – which has been downgraded to a hurricane – comes weeks after torrential rain inundated the city of Auckland, which remains under a state of emergency.
Tens of thousands of sandbags have been distributed over concerns that the decaying ground and weak infrastructure have made homes more vulnerable to flooding.
National carrier Air New Zealand has canceled several domestic flights ahead of the storm’s arrival.
On Norfolk Island, which covers just 34 square kilometers (13 square miles) in the Pacific Ocean between New Caledonia and New Zealand, officials said they were removing debris and trees from roads and restoring power outages in the storm. are
“There is still a lot of cleanup to be done and it may take some time to restore services such as power,” said Emergency Management Norfolk Island.
New Zealand’s MetService warned that winds could still be strong enough to damage trees and power lines, and there could be enough rain to cause more flooding and landslides in the coming days.
Prime Minister Chris Hopkins said: “Our main message to people across the country is to please take severe weather warnings seriously and make sure you are prepared.
“Make sure you have your grab-and-go kits, make sure you know where to go if you need to evacuate your home.”
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The Coromandel Peninsula and the Tairāwhiti/Gisborne region, which have also been affected by recent torrential rain, have been placed under a very severe weather warning.
Residents of flood-affected areas have been asked to be prepared to evacuate.
“There is a degree of panic and anxiety around this upcoming event,” Lynn Salt, mayor of the Thames-Coromandel district, told JEE News.
“The people of the Coromandel are quite resilient, but the fact that we’ve been in this cyclone mode since the beginning of January…people are tired.”
