Rain brings down apartment ceilings

An overnight downpour caused thousands of dollars worth of damage to a pair of 12th Avenue apartments after blocked drains on a flat roof forced water into the building.

Plaster ceilings crashed down on to the bedrooms below and poured through light fittings, says Tauranga Fire Service senior station officer Phil Price today.


Two 12th Avenue apartments were damaged during last night's downpour.

'The water built up on the roof and went back under the roof and collapsed the ceilings in the bedrooms,” says Phil.

'We got up on the roof and cleared the drains and a huge amount of water came off.

'That was too late. It had gone down into the bedrooms and flooded them, and it had gone down into the ground floor ceilings as well and it was pouring out all of the lights.

'There was not much we could do other than pull down the rest of the plaster ceilings so they wouldn't fall on anybody.”

Fire fighters were called at 9.48pm last night and were at the scene for about half-an-hour, leaving the occupants to carry on the clean-up with buckets and mops.

The Metservice rain gauge at Tauranga airport recorded 17.8mm of rain fell last night. Until last night's downpour there had been 26.4mm of rain recorded at the airport this month.

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3 comments

How

Posted on 27-02-2015 09:27 | By Capt_Kaveman

Do such bad designs pass building codes? Tauranga holds the record for the most rain in 10mins and this area is known to have cloud bursts like last night on a regular basis best i could record was approx 15mm


Capt_Kaveman

Posted on 27-02-2015 13:50 | By earlybird

If you read the article again it specifically mentions "blocked drains" which would make this event caused by a lack of basic maintenance not a design fault.


Only an idiot.....

Posted on 28-02-2015 05:15 | By Jimmy Ehu

purchases a building with a flat roof and internal guttering!!!!, so yes it is the wisdom of a "fancy architect" originally "earlybird".


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