| 81 T T Hugh de Lacy Flood protection a growing need Hydro Response offers five different products and strategies to contain water, and has had a major role in flood defence and recovery work in both New Zealand and Australia Hydro Response CONTRACTING Water where it’s not wanted is bread and butter to Kaiapoi, North Canterbury, company Hydro Response. Owned and run by Clay Griffin, Hydro Response specialises in providing flood defences, and in water diversion for civil contracting projects. It offers five different products and strategies to contain water, and has had a major role in flood defence and recovery work in both New Zealand and Australia, while there and elsewhere also offering permanent water protection for buildings in flood-prone areas. Before Hydro Response’s arrival on the scene, about the only way to protect buildings from floods was sand-bagging, while diverting waterways so civil infrastructure work could be carried out in riverbeds required piling up dirt to create levees to keep the flow at bay. Today, Clay instead assesses a given water containment situation, then imports the components, which are delivered directly to the client. Hydro Responses products include: An industrial-grade PVC tube barrier called Aqua Barrier, made in Texas, which can be quickly filled with water to create barriers between 0.3m and 2.4m high. A Canadian-made self-inflated barrier called Water-Gate, a portable, reuseable self-inflating barrier up to 1.5m high that can be used for damming waterways or building reservoirs. A British-made expanding door and vent-sealing system called Floodgate that can be rapidly deployed to prevent floodwater entering buildings. The free-standing steel-framed reusable European-made Geodesign barrier system that can contain water up to 2.45m deep. A range of stoplog, flood gates and doors manufactured in the UK by Flood Control International. “A typical deployment that we undertook in Westport two years ago was erecting Geodesign Barriers around the hospital and airport during the major floods there,” Clay says. “Our biggest deployment of barriers was in the northern Queensland towns of Maryborough and Rockhampton that were threatened with flooding in 2020 and 2021, where the local council purchased and deployed Geodesign Barriers to protected 400 homes and businesses. “A typical deployment that we undertook in Westport two years ago was erecting Geodesign Barriers around the hospital and airport during the major floods there.” “The local authorities have seen the benefits of having their own caches of barriers which have paid for themselves after one deployment. More recently, we assisted a client in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, to install their purchased Aqua-Barrier to access the floor of the famous Dubai Fountain for painting trials.” Back nearer home, Hydro Response has supplied barriers to protect Christchurch Hospital’s ground-floor lift shafts from flooding by the adjacent Avon River – the lifts would become inoperable if water got into the bottom of the shafts during a flood event. Other flood-protection measures have been supplied to multiple commercial buildings around the country, including rest homes, libraries and retail stores, where protection is needed and insurance policies for floods have been restored, with a range of thoroughly tested and certified products, including FM Global certification. “With global warming increasing the frequency of major flood events, and building owners wanting to protect their properties temporarily or permanently, we’re finding a rapidly increasing demand for our services and solutions,” Clay says. “We’re also getting more demand for barriers for a range of civil construction projects.” FLOOD PROTECTION BARRIERS FLOOD RESPONSE SERVICE CIVIL WORKS WATER CONTROL Kaiapoi Mill, 35 Ranfurly St, Kaiapoi | 0800 FLOODING | hydroresponse.com
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