Flash flooding and landslides hit Auckland after torrential rain

At least four people have been killed as “torrential rain continues to hammer” Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city.

The city of 1.7 million people has been “battered by rain” since Friday with a state of emergency in operation on Sunday, said The Guardian. Officials at the national weather forecaster, MetService, warned that severe weather for the region will continue into Monday, with intense rainfall causing surface and flash flooding.

Flooding has “inundated homes” in the area with online videos showing “chest-deep water in some places”, said Sky News. It has also led to road closures and train derailments, while authorities have said that “thousands” of properties remain without power and “hundreds” have no water supply.

“The most horrific part of it is that we’ve lost lives,” said deputy prime minister Carmel Sepuloni, the Independent reported. Prime minister Chris Hipkins, who has been in office for less than a week after replacing Jacinda Ardern, has said the impact of the floods on the city was “unprecedented” in recent memory.

The Guardian said that climate change was a contributing factor to the flooding, “causing episodes of heavy rainfall to become more common and more intense in New Zealand, though the impact varies by region”.

“Our hearts go out to everyone impacted by the AKL [Auckland] flooding,” tweeted New Zealand’s climate change minister James Shaw on Saturday. “This is climate change. We all have a responsibility to make certain the NZ we leave our kids is safe & habitable,” he added.

The city’s mayor, Wayne Brown, drew criticism for what his detractors said was poor communication after the rain intensified in the city. Brown’s perceived inaction was compounded by leaked WhatsApp messages in which he “griped about having to cancel tennis ‘to deal with media drongos over the flooding’”, said the New Zealand Herald.