The mayor of Porirua City has revealed the "absolutely unbelievable" destruction caused in the area over the weekend by flash flooding.
Heavy rain hit the lower North Island on Sunday flooding houses and submerging cars, leaving at least 15 homes in nearby Plimmerton uninhabitable.
MetService said some areas in the Wellington region were hit by between 20 and 30 millimetres of rain in an hour on Sunday morning as the wild weather tore through.
Porirua mayor Anita Baker told The AM Show on Monday that the affected homes were all at the bottom of a valley, where the water had run down to.
"All of the sediment and trees that were knocked down came down into those drains and the drains blocked up and it all just combined in one area and the low-lying area bore the brunt of it."
She said the drains in the area are reasonably small which didn't help with the flash flooding.
"Everyone says we need larger pipes. At the moment they are actually working and are coping but with the amount of trees and debris that was blocking the grates and the sides of the drains, that wasn't helping so the water was struggling to get out."
Baker told The AM Show that she had been out in the town on Sunday to assess the damage.
"[It's] absolutely unbelievable walking around yesterday talking to people," she said.
"One lady had gone out and her house was okay but her car had drowned, it was two weeks old. She said the insurance company are going to come and tow it. Another lady said to me 'I've got water bubbling up through my floorboards'."
But Baker said locals and emergency services have been amazing in offering to help with the cleanup.
"I walked around the corner and there were people from Paremata who came to help people they didn't know, carrying out buckets of sludge from these people's houses.
"Then the landlord knocked me on the shoulder to say 'Come and have a look at my house, I haven't been able to get in to see my tenants', he'd been stuck in Pauatahanui in the rain... We got there and there were two cars almost buried up to their doors with sediment. They had kindly bought another car for their tenants. The people around have just been amazing."
Porirua is set for more rain on Monday afternoon although it is expected to clear up later in the week according to WeatherWatch.
