Gisborne's rain has faded but not stopped, and it's leaving Civil Defence and Emergency Management in the area concerned about what will happen over the weekend.
On Thursday residents of Sponge Bay, Pouawa and Loisels were forced to leave their homes yesterday when a month's worth of rain fell in the city in less than a day. Emergency services had to use inflatable rescue boats for some evacuations as river levels rose and there were widespread power outages.
A state of emergency is still in place but a heavy rain warning has been lifted, even though the rain isn't expected to stop any time soon.
Gisborne Civil Defence controller Dave Wilson told Morning Report the forecast rain over the weekend is cause for concern.
"We're concerned with the ground as saturated is it as across the whole of the region that we're going to see more slips and landslides occur, and we're worried about damage to a roading network in people's homes."
He said the city of Gisborne was the main area of concern.
"There are a number of properties on the hillsides around Gisborne where we know that there's been significant rainfall, and some of those have had some quite decent sized slips move yesterday.
"One of the things we concerned about is with this consistent rain, particularly further up the coast, what impacts that's going to have up there given they've also had significant volumes of rain up there as well."
Wilson said it was too early to tell if some homes already damaged after Thursday's rain are unsalvageable, and it will depend what insurance and inspectors say.
