It's been three months since Auckland's wettest day on record caused apocalyptic scenes of mass flooding across the city.
Two streets in the west Auckland suburb of Henderson were among the very first to evacuate but months later, the area has been largely vacated and residents have no answers about whether they will ever return.
The streets surrounding Clover Drive are empty, the houses stripped bare.
The small west Auckland community once filled with families has become a bit of a ghost town.
"It sucks seeing the properties like this. As you can see they're a little bit… they look like crap," Clover Drive resident Shae Edwards said.
"Everything from that side over is empty. That's empty, that's empty. It's a chess game of yellow and white," Clover Drive resident Rebecca Magee said.
On January 27, the residents of Meadowcroft Way and Clover Drive raised the alarm bell as Auckland began to flood.
But after the water vanished, so did all the people.
Edwards and her family were among the many taken to safety but also the few lucky enough to return.
"It was literally like a movie, it came out of a movie. And it came so fast out of nowhere," she said.
Most of the water rushed in from the back of Magee's property, knocking down her fence with the force.
"The pressure of it was under the house... so it has definitely moved the house forward a bit, I'm just not sure how much. The house is quite talkative now, very noisy," she said.
And although cracks have appeared, Magee can still live in her home for now.
But she's been told it will need to be ripped down to the joists and there are also EQC claims in three parts of her section.
Just across the street, builders have dismantled the inside of another home.
"It's quite bad actually. All the timber's just really swollen and wet and it's no good for health. No good for the lady that lives here," builder Anthony Casey said.
While further down the road, the Singh family has no indication of whether their property will need repairs or a full rebuild - but right now they can't live there.
"We want this to be sorted out as early as possible. As early as possible," Meadowcroft Way resident Rajinder Singh said.
Thirty-six of the properties here are state houses owned by Kāinga Ora. Of those, 23 were damaged and eight will need to be knocked down. But 13 families have already been permanently relocated.
"That's their choice, and there are varying reasons for that. Many people have expressed that they were just too traumatised by the level of water that came up and into their homes," Kāinga Ora regional director for north and west Auckland Taina Jones said.
And whether it could happen again is the biggest question while homeowners wait to hear if the Government has plans for managed retreats in the area.
Three months on and there are now more questions than answers for the residents of what used to be a bustling community.
