Death toll from New Zealand cyclone reaches eight

Men clear debris by hand on a flooded road in Te Awanga, southeast of Auckland, New Zealand, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. The New Zealand government declared a state of emergency across the country’s North Island, which has been battered by Cyclone Gabrielle. (Warren Buckland/Hawkes Bay Today via AP)

The death toll from New Zealand’s cyclone has reached eight with more than 4,500 people still unaccounted for four days after the nation’s most destructive weather event in decades, the prime minister said.

Cyclone Gabrielle struck the country’s north on Monday, bringing widespread flooding, landslides and power outages, and the level of damage has been compared to Cyclone Bola in 1988. That storm was the most destructive on record to hit the nation of five million people.