On Friday morning, Ian and Robin Campbell returned to their St Kilda home, wading through shin-deep water in their hallway.

Their home has stood on bluestone piles since 1876, and the family has lived there for 16 years. They evacuated at 10pm on Wednesday night.

“We were … flooded in 2015, and now we’ve been hit again,” Ian said.

The couple had prepared for the storm with sandbags, which proved futile.

“The water was coming up under the floor and up through the shower… The carpets were lifting” he told the Herald.

Ian lamented the impact on their home, which had just been renovated after the previous flood. “It’s all ruined again,” he said.

The couple is grateful for the kindness of the Red Cross workers at St Clair who provided food, blankets and breakfasts for families and pets alike.

“It happens, but you can’t do much about it. You can’t stop the water.”

Peter and Sasha Forrester, also residents of St Kilda, faced a challenging decision in the early hours of Thursday morning as floodwaters began to rise in their home.

They evacuated to the welfare centre at the St Clair Golf Club at 2:30 am. “The water was coming up our bathroom floor and into the hallway,” Peter said.

“It was causing quite a bit of damage down there.”

Their son, who has autism, was anxious and did not want to sleep in the welfare centre, leading the family to spend the night in their car with their two cats and two dogs.

“The next step is to try and see what help we can get with accommodation,” Peter said.

On Saturday morning, a Dunedin resident who asked not to be named was clearing sandbags from their parents’ South Dunedin property.

“It’s been pretty worrying for them,” he said.

“Once you’ve done the basics, it’s just about riding it out and helping out with the people.”

He said the water just approached the home’s front door but fortunately did not get inside.

“The biggest problem early on was cars driving through, which created more waves,” he said.

“We started sandbagging on Friday morning to stop the surges from crashing into the house… The neighbours have been fantastic. They’ve been keeping an eye on things and checking in every couple of hours.”

On Saturday morning, Carl Aiau was clearing debris from the roadside. He also took issue with the cars pushing water onto properties.

“Sometimes you’d see someone going pretty quick, but the police were patrolling heavily later in the day… It didn’t affect us too much because of our elevation, but if you were lower down, you’d be pretty annoyed.”

Craig McFarland, owner of the Wests Cordials building in South Dunedin, was pumping water out of the building on Friday morning. He commended locals and the council for their efforts.

“They put sandbags in for us. The worst thing is, it’s just slowly coming up a little bit more. Hopefully, it’ll go down soon.

“We’ll survive this. It’s not that bad. I think we’ve been pretty lucky. All the storms that have been hitting New Zealand and Dunedin have come out pretty well, so this is probably our turn.”

Resident Sue Green spoke as floodwaters lapped at her front porch on Friday morning.

“It’s just distressing because the waters are rising, and we’re having cars coming through all the time… Most are going a wee bit slow, but it causes a wake, and it laps over the front step. It’s going to come to a point where it’s just going to come into the house, and it’s really upsetting. I don’t think they’ve got any business on a day like this to be out and about.”

“I’m upset, nervous, wondering whether I should be leaving. Is it sensible to still be here? The rain hasn’t stopped, and I just don’t know when I should be leaving.”

On Saturday morning, Moreau St residents Merridee, 73, and Kevin Watson, 74, said their home felt like a castle on Friday: “Water all around us. We couldn’t even get out. It was just water everywhere.”

“It wasn’t scary, but we were watching the houses across the road and thinking, ‘Oh my goodness,’” they said. “You can’t worry about what you can’t change. You can’t stop the rain.”

They echoed concerns about traffic: “The rubberneckers were causing the problem. You get a four-wheel drive, and the waters break over the bottom, just coming in all these houses.”

The couple said that they narrowly avoided water entering their home.

“It was very, very close. Our kids said, ‘Oh, you need to shift. You need to evacuate.’ But we couldn’t go to their place because they live by the Leith, and they were watching the rise,” they said.

The couple thanked the community and council for their support, who voluntarily placed sandbags and made welfare checks.

Maia residents Fiona Cadogan and Chad Ralston narrowly escaped a devastating landslide that tore through their property on Friday night.

Now in limbo, they await updates from insurance and geotechnical engineers while grappling with uncertainty about their home and pets.

“Watching a force of nature just tear through things… it’s surreal,” Ralston said.

Neighbours Robert Aitken and Leah Watkins said they did not hear the landslip, but recalled being woken by a firefighter banging on their window to tell them to evacuate.

They quickly gathered some belongings and headed to the welfare centre at Forsyth Barr Stadium, where volunteers provided blankets and reassurance.

“I think the emergency services were tremendous,” Aitken said praising the response of the council and Red Cross, who assisted those in need, including people requiring medication.

“When you look out that window and see how close it was, I think people are very lucky.”

A state of emergency remains in effect for Dunedin and Clutha.

While State Highway 1 has reopened both north and south of Dunedin, many local roads remain closed because of slips and flooding and a boil water notice has been issued for parts of the city.

At a media stand-up from the city’s Civil Defence bunker on Saturday morning, Radich said that the cessation of rainfall came as a relief.

Radich said it was still too early for an overall assessment of the damage, associated costs and relief requirement, and more decisions would be made on Monday.

“We’ve moved out of the emergency situation, but now we’re looking to start on repair and cleanup,” he said.

Ben Tomsett is a Multimedia Journalist for the New Zealand Herald, based in Dunedin.

Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.