One month ago, Cyclone Gabrielle wreaked havoc across the North Island causing widespread damage and destruction, but some Esk Valley residents are still questioning the delay in evacuating.
Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, Tairawhiti and Hawke's Bay were among the regions most significantly hit, resulting in major slips.
The flooding killed 11 New Zealanders, eight in Hawke's Bay, two in Auckland and one in Tairawhiti.
As of midday Monday, 766 households are still without power, 666 houses have been red-stickered, 2600 yellow-stickered and more than 84,000 insurance claims have been received.
The exact cost of the recovery is still unknown and the Government confirmed to AM, it has already paid out around $407 million.
A large portion goes just to roading, but also on-the-ground community support, the total bill is estimated to be around $3 billion.
Esk Valley strawberry farmer Donald Crosby told AM he's "doing okay under the circumstances" and is still in a state of shock one month on.
Crosby said Cyclone Gabrielle forced a nearby river to rush through his home at around 2am on the Tuesday morning.
"There was around two metres of water and in place, it's left up to two and a half metres of debris, with a total of around 58,000 cubic metres of silt and debris left sort of around the site," Crosby said.
"So it's pretty bad."
Crosby said his strawberry farm has been "heavily damaged" and the biggest task he faces is the removal of the massive amounts of debris and silt.
"About a third of the greenhouses and the rest have had some damage and are just filled with silt and other firewood, and slash and everything you can imagine."
Though Crosby has been able to move some silt and debris around, he's waiting on the regional council to begin their work.
"[I've] definitely had some success in clearing some driveways in and getting ready to clear out the greenhouses to get ready for next year. But it's going to be a long process."
And while Crosby's community has come together despite the sheer destruction left by Cyclone Gabrielle, he said "everyone is asking" why there was a lack of information around evacuations.
"A lot of people are asking why that wasn't more widespread."
He said he was evacuated at about 11:30pm on the Monday.
"I got a message from the fire brigade, the Bay View fire brigade were working up and down the road telling people to get out."
Hawke's Bay Regional Council Interim chief executive Pieri Munro told AM forecasting and modelling at the time didn't warrant evacuations in the Esk Valley.
"All of the forecasting that had been done on the Monday leading up to about 10, 11 o'clock at night had indicated a significant amount of rain was going to be falling over the Tararua Ranges, that's on the southern side," Munro said.
"Whereas what we had up in the Glengarry and up in the Esk Valley was about 502mm that actually fell, which is in contrast to the forecast and modelling."
Munro said the council wasn't able to monitor rainfall in real-time because its rain level gauges went down on the morning of Tuesday 14.
"We had no other means in terms of understanding what's coming down those streams, given the contrast in terms of Met[Service] forecast and the modelling we'd done."
He said there was no way authorities could have evacuated Esk Valley residents at 2am when rainfall was at its peak.
"It's dark, there was no means of getting up there without impeding the safety of other people at the time".
AM host Ryan Bridge asked Munro if he believed Esk Valley should be red-zoned, Munro said he wasn't in a position to determine that.
"There are many places that have been devastated, not just Esk Valley, there are other places across our region that have been similarly devastated, so I think we need to think carefully in the future about where people are choosing to live and where councils are zoning people to live."
Watch the full interviews above.
