Over 1000 homes were without power around Hawke’s Bay on Monday morning and the Tararua district was in a state of emergency as strong winds uprooted trees and heavy rain swelled streams and rivers.

Tararua Mayor Scott Gilmore said the council declared a state of emergency on Sunday evening so “we could coordinate our response and support the community as the weather came through”.

As at Monday morning, the council reported “some self-evacuations have taken place in coastal areas” including the Herbertville Inn and campground.

Sixteen schools in the district were closed, and there were power outages and trees down in the district. The state of emergency remained in place.

Just further north, Hawke’s Bay was also hit hard by high winds and rainfall on Sunday night and early Monday.

Powerline companies Unison (Hastings and Napier), Centralines (Central Hawke’s Bay), and Firstlight (Wairoa) were working hard to restore power to impacted communities - with over 1000 outages.

Most of the outages were in rural areas, including an outage impacting 637 properties in the Maraetotara, Kahuranaki, Waimarama and Ocean Beach area.

Other major outages included one impacting 361 properties in the Te Hauke and Otane area.

Several schools were closed in Hawke’s Bay on Monday, and including the likes of Patoka School and Argyll East School.

A strong wind warning (orange) was in place for Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne Tairawhiti from Sunday evening to Monday 9am.

There was also a heavy rain warning (orange) for Tararua and for some parts of Hawke’s Bay- such as south of Waipukurau and eastern Hawke’s Bay hills from Cape Kidnappers south - until 10am on Monday (and 7am for Tararua).

Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery Mark Mitchell visited Wairoa on Sunday evening ahead of the wild weather.

The Napier-Taihape Rd was closed as at Monday morning due to the weather. All state highways in Hawke’s Bay were open.