Water outage Elsdon,Titahi Bay 0800-1200 18/05/11

A large water main feeding into Titahi Bay and Elsdon has ruptured. Those areas and parts of the BD and Ranui may be without water until midday today 18/05/11. Repair crews are on site.

Severe Thunderstorm Watch

A Severe Thunderstorm Watch has been issued which includes the Wellington area

An active front is expected to pass over central New Zealand between midnight and dawn. Thunderstorms are expected to develop on this front. The thunderstorms could be severe, producing gusts of 120km/h, as it crosses over northwest
Nelson, the Outer Marlborough Sounds, northern Wellington, Kapiti Coast, Horowhenua and Taranaki. Wind gusts of this strength can cause some structural damage, including trees and power lines, and may make driving hazardous.

Take care if you are out and about overnight! It may cause more surface flooding as well.

Severe weather

If you haven't just been woken up by that massive rumble of thunder, you may have already noticed that it's been raining a fair bit!

The Fire Service are currently run off their feet dealing with flooding incidents around the region, and there is quite a bit of surface flooding around Porirua, and we can probably expect more as this frontal system moves through over the next few hours.

Hopefully things shouldn't get as bad as they did in the last big rainstorm in Porirua, the tide is going out so shouldn't be causing too many problems with the stormwater outlets, allowing it all to drain away.

If you are having problems with flooding on your property from overflowing stormwater etc, don't forget to call the council - 237-5089 - we can't try to fix what we don't know about - so give us a call, even if you rang us last time as well.

Also take care when driving out there - please don't drive or wade through floodwaters, the wake from your vehicle can cause problems, or it may be too deep and disable your car, and if you are on foot you may not be able to see that a manhole cover has popped and fall in.

Stormwater is often contaminated with sewage, so don't let your kids go playing in it either.

Emergency udpates on Twitter

I've just taken our Twitter account -www.twitter.com/poriruaEMO - off its automatic update from the blog. We'll save it for emergency announcements (and the occassional test message) so that you can sign up to it with your mobile phone and not worry about the other news stories that I might post here.

You can expect to get notifications about Severe Weather Warnings affecting our area, major road closures (if we hear about them in time), things like tsunami warnings, and other big emergency events, and I might post the magnitude and other details for quakes big enough to be felt locally.

If you've got ideas as to what other kinds of notifications you'd like via Twitter, let us know in the comments!

But wait, there's more

Apparently no one listens to me when I say enough is enough.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4956336/Tornado-strikes-Auckland-leaves-trail-of-destruction

I think we've had enough now, thanks...

I go on holiday for just a little while and look what happens!

The hard-working staff of the NCMC had just reverted to business-as-usual after the Canterbury quake, and someone goes and declares another State of Emergency!

Homes evacuated, towns cut off, power & phone outages, damage to water supplies, and too much water everywhere it shouldn't be. Not the way most people want to spend their Easter holidays in the Hawkes Bay.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4948026/Hawkes-Bay-evacuations-complete