{"id":48343,"date":"2026-04-12T07:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T07:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=48343"},"modified":"2026-04-12T07:00:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T07:00:30","slug":"floods-power-outages-and-hundreds-evacuated-as-cyclone-vaianu-lashes-new-zealands-north-island-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=48343","title":{"rendered":"Floods, power outages and hundreds evacuated as Cyclone Vaianu lashes New Zealand\u2019s North Island | New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Cyclone Vaianu made landfall in New Zealand\u2019s<\/a> North Island on Sunday, triggering floods, power outages and forcing hundreds to evacuate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cyclone crossed the coast near the Maketu peninsula, packing destructive winds exceeding 130km\/h (80 mph), heavy rain and large swells, national weather provider MetService said, describing Vaianu as a \u201clife-threatening\u201d system.<\/p>\n

Authorities have placed several regions under emergency declarations and issued \u201cred\u201d level wind warnings, which are reserved for only the most extreme weather events.<\/p>\n

The cyclone was tracking towards the fringes of the North Island, sparing Auckland, the country\u2019s most populous city, from the worst conditions, said emergency management minister Mark Mitchell. But stronger winds and swells were still expected after its afternoon landfall.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>The Mahurangi River after heavy rain in Warkworth on 12 April, 2026 in Auckland, New Zealand. <\/span> Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s moved more to the fringes and more to the east, which means that we haven\u2019t quite seen the intensity that we had prepared for or that we thought we were going to get hit with. So that is good news,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of what we\u2019re going to expect over the next 12 hours is we are going to see a bit more of intensification, as the cyclone starts to come down and get closer.\u201c<\/p>\n

The combination of the afternoon\u2019s high tide and large swells from the storm could trigger coastal inundation, Mitchell warned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concerning time is really from 2pm this afternoon (0800 GMT) onwards when we\u2019ve got high tides combined with those big swells,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The cyclone has forced hundreds of residents to evacuate and knocked out electricity to 5,000 homes, with power restored to roughly 2,000, he said.<\/p>\n

Authorities in the coastal Whakatane District reported a significant amount of damage as Vaianu passed through, with mandatory evacuations carried out at 270 properties.<\/p>\n

New Zealand defence force members and heavy equipment have also been deployed to assist with evacuations.<\/p>\n

MetService said it had recorded 130 km\/h wind gusts in some areas, 24-hour rainfall totals of more than 100mm (4 inches) in the city of Whangarei and wave heights exceeding 6m (20 feet).<\/p>\n

Air New Zealand said in a statement that it had cancelled more than 90 turboprop flights, primarily out of regional North Island airports.<\/p>\n

\u201cDomestic jet and international services are operating as scheduled, although there are some delays due to the weather conditions,\u201d the airline said.<\/p>\n

Fire and emergency New Zealand said it responded to more than 100 calls for assistance relating to wind damage and surface flooding.<\/p>\n

Conditions will ease as Vaianu works its way down the North Island before exiting on Sunday evening at Hawke\u2019s Bay, MetService said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings do improve from tonight and tomorrow, but at the moment this is still a life-threatening weather system,\u201d said Heather Keats, MetService head of weather news.<\/p>\n

Vaianu has conjured up memories of 2023\u2019s Cyclone Gabrielle<\/a>, which killed 11 and displaced thousands in one of New Zealand\u2019s biggest natural disasters this century.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Cyclone Vaianu made landfall in New Zealand\u2019s North Island on Sunday, triggering floods, power outages and forcing hundreds to evacuate. The cyclone crossed the coast near…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}