The next morning, he had a visit from a police officer delivering the sad news that Daniel Miller had been found dead in a culvert on Target Rd at about 7.30pm that Friday.
One of the other victims that night was 25-year-old Daniel Newth, who lived in Sunnynook and was also swept into the Wairau Valley storm drains while kayaking in the floodwaters.
The two other victims were Dave Lennard, 78, who died after his Remuera home was hit by a landslip, and 58-year-old Dave Young, who was swept away in floodwaters in the rural Waikato town of Onewhero.
The rain outside is just one of the many constant reminders about his son that stay with Steve Miller. Daniel Miller grew up in Napier and moved to Auckland when he was 19.
âThere is always January 27 coming up, birthdays, Christmases, rainy days,â the 61-year-old father said.
âIt feels like it happened only yesterday. Itâs harrowing for the family. For me, his mum and his two sons miss him dearly. Itâs something that never really goes away. People say it gets easier with time, but it hasnât felt that way yet.â
Miller attended last yearâs coronial inquest via video link, listening for hours until he felt it was no longer helping. He did, however, submit a statement calling for manhole covers to be locked, which was read to the court.
âWeâve been to the manhole. There was a cross there and a bunch of flowers. Iâve been there. Iâve touched it. Iâve looked at it.
âA sad accident happened that should never have happened. The manhole cover blew off. They shouldnât be able to blow off,â he said.
Andrew Skelton, head of flood resilience operations at Auckland Councilâs Healthy Waters division, expressed the councilâs deepest sympathy to Steve Miller over the tragic loss of his son.
He said manhole covers can become dislodged during flooding, creating a safety risk.
âTo reduce these risks, the council is installing safety grills and selfâclosing covers in highârisk areas or where safety concerns are known,â Skelton said.
âThese grills allow stormwater to flow while preventing people from entering the pipes. The programme will cost $9.5 million over four years, and more than 2300 grills have already been installed.â
Another step the council has taken since the floods is to proceed with a controversial plan to redevelop half of Takapuna Golf Course for a flood-detention wetland for Wairau Valley and Milford.
The Wairau flood resilience project is part of the councilâs Making Space for Water programme, which has allocated $760m to building infrastructure that manages floodwaters in temporary reservoirs or detention sinks, usually on parkland.
Steve Miller wasnât aware of the golf course plan, but welcomed the action to prevent future flooding in the low-lying basin on the North Shore.
Brendon and Steph Deaconâs experience doesnât compare to Miller losing his son, but it underscores how those excluded from the councilâs buyout scheme are left feeling helpless and anxious whenever heavy rain is forecast.
The Deacons evacuated their home by grabbing their two young toddlers and kayaking to safety in the middle of the night when the Kumeƫ River overflowed on to their Huapai property during a flood in 2021.
They were better prepared for the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods in 2023, but the rising water levels still made it a frightening ordeal. In the three years since, nine properties around their Pinotage Place home have been classified as an intolerable risk to life and bought out.
But not the Deaconsâ, which now sits like an island, surrounded by vacant land.
The past three years have been incredibly tough on the young family, who left their home of nine years at the weekend for Laings Beach, where Brendon Deaconâs sister has generously offered them a house for 12 months.
âWe have our ups and downs; itâs been quite an emotional rollercoaster,â Steph Deacon said.
âThere is still a huge amount of rain anxiety for us,â she said, adding that last Wednesdayâs storm meant her husband was up all night keeping an eye on the water level.
Then thereâs the impact on the coupleâs daughters, aged 8 and 6.
The other night, Megan Deacon, whoâs 8, kept asking, âIs it going to flood? Is it going to flood?â It was hard to reassure her when you donât know yourself whatâs going to happen, Brendon Deacon said. He has spent years trying to explain to the girls why neighbouring houses and their friends have disappeared.
The Deacons have applied to the High Court for a judicial review after the council classified their property as lowârisk, Category 1, rather than Category 3, which would indicate an intolerable risk to life and property. They subsequently sought a buyout under special circumstances, but that application was also declined.
âOur message to the council is to do whatâs right. Be human about things. Stop hiding behind emails, stop hiding behind lawyers,â Brendon Deacon said.
âThis is all about risk to life. Our children were put at risk to life. We were put at risk to life. Just do the human thing and give us what our neighbours got to move out of a dangerous place.â
Group recovery manager Mace Ward said the council understands how challenging the situations are for storm-affected people and recognised that some outcomes may not be what people hoped for.
âOur priority is to support recovery in line with agreed government and council risk policies and risk frameworks, which are essential to ensure equity when using public funds,â he said.
Ward would not comment on the Deaconsâ case while it was before the court.
âWeâre now at the tail end of a huge recovery programme, with thousands of individual repair and recovery initiatives delivered across the region by the Auckland Council group. Some of the hardest work hasnât been the physically visible stuff; itâs been supporting Aucklanders to make incredibly difficult decisions about their future,â Ward said.
The council has settled 1038 property buyouts, with a further 51 pending settlements. A small number of complex cases are expected to be resolved by May.
On road damage, Ward said many of the more than 2000 slips were cleared in the months after the storms, with 96% now completed.
Last year, Scenic Drive, the main route to Piha, was reopened after multiple slips. Most of the remaining major worksites are in West Auckland, and Auckland Transport is expected to complete the recovery programme by mid-2026, Ward said.
Watercare and the councilâs Healthy Waters division have completed major network repairs, including to the wastewater networks in Murrays Bay, Northcote and Pukekohe.
Funding and designs have been confirmed for four major multimillionâdollar floodâresilience projects, accelerating nearly $200m of work. Two projects now underway in MÄngere are due for completion this year; one replacing a bridge on a key transport route and the other replacing a wastewater pipe that carries 70% of Aucklandâs wastewater, to reduce major blockage risks.
After the January 27 floods, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown commissioned a rapid review by former Police Commissioner Mike Bush into the emergency response.
The damning Bush review found a âsystem failureâ of leadership in the first 12 hours of the response, in which âmuch of the damage was doneâ before the council, or Brown, had taken any action.
Brown was also heavily criticised in the days after the floods for his slowness to declare a state of emergency until after 10pm that Friday, despite emergency services being at capacity since about 5pm.
Asked recently by the Herald what he had learned from the floods, Brown acknowledged he had learned a lot.
âI wasnât particularly well prepared. The council wasnât particularly well prepared. Auckland Emergency Management wasnât well prepared. The city wasnât well prepared.
âAuckland Emergency Management is a hell of a lot better than it was. Fenz [Fire and Emergency New Zealand] has also taken a step forward. What Iâm most proud of, which came out of that, is the Healthy Waters programme âMaking Space for Waterâ. I think thatâs a marvellous thing, even if it does upset one or two golfers from Takapuna. In the long term, itâs a really good thing to do.â
The mayor has also thanked Aucklanders for following Auckland Emergency Managementâs guidance over last weekâs heavy rains and for taking the necessary steps to prepare for the severe weather.
âEmergency services have responded quite well this time,â he said.
Less than a fortnight after the Auckland Anniversary floods, Cyclone Gabrielle devastated parts of Auckland and the North Island, claiming the lives of 11 people, including volunteer firefighters Dave van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens, who were killed in a landslide at Muriwai.
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