Friday 21 April 2017

More damage to challenged Napier-Gisborne Line

In the middle of this picture you can see a new washout about 30 metres long between Tunnels 16 and 17 on the Napier-Gisborne line in the Whareratas. This aerial image on Google Earth is dated 3/3/2016. Looking at other photos damage has occurred in other areas as well. 

Given how fragile this section is, it is highly likely the recent heavy rainfall events of a couple of cyclones have caused more damage. There is a whole lot of this area that has not got footage later than 2011 so we can't actually see anything from the past five or six years on GE. However there is more recent coverage for the HBRC side of the boundary from 2014-15 and this shows that the above washout has probably occurred between 2015-16.