Photo: Nurg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
It is two years since Cyclone Gabrielle brought heavy rainfall and gale force winds that devastated North Island from February 11 to 17, 2023. At the time, Finance Minister Grant Robertson described it as “the biggest weather event this century.”
Communities impacted and stakeholders involved in the recovery, including insurance firms, are marking the anniversary.
The Hawke’s Bay region and Auckland were among the severely impacted areas as coastal inundations and landslides damaged critical infrastructure and property. The final calculation of insurance market losses by PERILS, the Zurich-based organisation, came to more than $2.1 billion.
The Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) has reported that insurers received nearly 59,000 claims.
The overall cost was much higher. 11 people died and some estimates put the total cost at up to $14.5 billion.
However, two years later, there are recovery and resilience stories that offer some reason for hope. Insurance firm QBE has shared one of those with Insurance Business.
Cyclone Gabrielle caused extensive damage and disruption to the kitchen facilities of ZIWI, New Zealand's biggest pet food exporter, employer of about 450 people and a customer of the giant insurer. The firm’s state-of-the-art kitchen in Hawke's Bay was only seven months old when the Cyclone struck.
“There was a combination of events because there’d been soaking rains before, then the Cyclone, then the flooding of the river,” said CEO Stuart Irvine.
In a QBE video, ZIWI’s head of health and safety, Greg Lorkin, said the whole facility and the surrounding area was submerged in about a metre of water.
“The initial assessment was dire, obviously,” said Phil Eddy, the firm’s site manager. In the video he described water-soaked finished goods and raw materials for making pet food floating everywhere.
Irvine said when the Cyclone struck his business, he was thinking about what insurance coverage he had and if it would be enough. The company did have coverages for the machines and for business interruption (BI), he said.
Eddy said because of support from their insurer, investors and landlord, the business was able to rebuild “very quickly.”
Despite the frequent reports of delayed claims payments by insurers, Irvine said the first payment from QBE came through in March, one month after the disaster. He said that gave him confidence to quickly replace the machines he had lost.
Irvine said when they the business was starting to get up and running again, the BI claims payments allowed his firm to fly pet food to markets he would normally ship to.
“Flying pet food seems really extravagant but if you lose your place in that market, in the mind of the consumer, you could lose your whole business,” he said.
The CEO said this insurance and recovery assistance “has helped your firm [QBE] become famous for doing some great work in some very difficult times.”
"We’re incredibly proud to have supported ZIWI and other businesses as they faced and overcame immense challenges,” said Jonathan Groves (pictured above), CEO of QBE New Zealand and Pacific. “These stories highlight the unbreakable spirit of New Zealand’s business community and the power of working together to turn adversity into opportunity."
Other businesses and communities are also marking the anniversary.
“While the overall recovery could take another three to five years, significant progress has been made to help address the immediate impact of the cyclones on individuals, whānau and communities in our district,” said Simon Taylor, in a media release from the Carterton District Council.
Taylor is programme manager for the Wairarapa Recovery Office (WRO). The WRO was established after cyclones Hale and Gabrielle to coordinate recovery efforts across three Wairarapa district councils.
“This is a tribute to everyone involved in the response and recovery effort to date, and to those still working to support people in impacted areas,” he said.
The overall human and economic damage from Cyclone Gabrielle was immense.
According to the Wellington based Public Health Communication Centre (PHCC), the event was “likely to have been the most costly weather-related disaster to have struck Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ).”
On the first anniversary of the disaster, the PHCC reported that the cyclone killed 11 people, displaced more than 10,500 and cost up to $14.5 billion.
