The night of the Tutukaka Tsunami
The night of 15 January 2022 started out like any ordinary evening for Tutukaka Marina Manager Dylan Lease, relaxing on the couch at the end of a busy day with his family.
Dylan has worked at Tutukaka Marina, which is operated by a charitable trust under the guidance of a volunteer trustees for Whangarei District Council, for fifteen years, and been manager for five.
At 816pm he was alerted by Northland Civil Defence of the possibility of tsunami activity following the volcano in Tonga.
Tutukaka Marina had experienced mild tsunami surges several times in recent years, and Dylan – a boardmember of the Tutukaka Coast Civil Defence - quickly went to the marina in order to warn berth holders and visitors of the tsunami hazard.
He was putting up warning signs in the dark around pier gates and in the carpark, and his next step was to go into the office and issue a warning when the tsunami hit at 935PM.
“It was dark. I heard an incredible roaring, crunching metal and fibreglass and timber,”
The first thing he did was turn off the fuel, to reduce the risk of spillage and the possibility of fire.
“I didn’t know if something was coming after that. I was thinking I had to get everyone off the piers. It turned out the first wave was the strongest, but I didn’t know if another wave was coming that might be bigger.”
Then he turned to clearing out the piers, one by one. He was joined in his efforts within ten minutes by both marina staff and volunteer trustees that lived nearby.
Incredibly, some of the live-aboards had slept through the wave, and were unaware what had happened, so the team had to wake people up to evacuate them.
Hearing yelling in the dark Dylan rescued one woman who was trapped in the water. He pulled her onto the dock, still with a purse in her hand.
“I didn’t expect anything to hit as heavily as it did or as forcefully,” he says.
Within an hour, emergency services also responded: police, fire brigade, and civil defence.
Tutukaka Marina Manager Dylan Lease
And in the days and weeks that followed, the marina industry also flocked in to support Tutukaka Marina’s recovery – which you can read about that in Dylan’s latest update. He is hugely appreciative of many people and businesses, including Tom Warren and Martin Douglas from Heron Developments.
Today, less than two months after the event, a casual passer by wouldn’t know that anything had happened at the marina, which is missing an entire pier, the ends of three piers, and half of its fuel jetty.
“Now we are working with insurers, and on engineering, drawings and planning. Dylan commends Rob Brown of Shorewise for his expertise. “I can’t say enough good things about him,” says Dylan.
Tutukaka Marina Management Trust provides regular updates and reports about its progress in the recovery, and its learnings. Use the button to download and read the latest report.
Photos (C) Melissa Rossaak-Logan, taken the day following the event