With the hot New Zealand sun beating down on them, firefighters are painstakingly combing through homes and cars all around the Esk Valley near Napier. 

One by one, they pull mud and reeds from car windows, break locks and wrench open boots to ensure no-one has been trapped inside.

They are searching properties where someone has been reported as unaccounted-for, and they have to meticulously check the property and any cars, houses and sheds that might be on it.

"They're highly trained specialists … and we look after their mental wellbeing," said Graeme Hall, an inspector with Queensland Fire and Emergency services, who's leading the team deployed from Australia.

"They also go to car accidents … but this is a larger scale, so they have coping mechanisms." 

It's hot, physical work in full protective equipment.

It's damp and muddy now, but this dirt is full of pesticides and bacteria so as it dries out, search teams face another problem: toxic dust.

"It's an extremely hazardous situation for firefighters — they have to be careful, very methodical," national commander of New Zealand fire and emergency Russell Wood said.

Grappling with the destruction

A week on from Cyclone Gabrielle, the weather gives no indication of what has happened and in much of Napier, things are largely normal — although many are still without power.

But you only have to drive a few minutes to start seeing the full extent of the damage.

On Pakowhai Rd, apples and pumpkins are strewn everywhere, homes are completely uninhabitable and still full of sludgy mud. Dead livestock has been cleared from the roadside.

Another 20 minutes on, in the Esk Valley, the scale of what the flood must have been like is incomprehensible — there's still water lying about, but where it's dried out there are thick sheets of sediment with upturned cars and caravans protruding from them.

Even houses have been moved hundreds of metres from where they stood.

"I couldn't believe how widespread it was," Inspector Hall said.

"There's an awful lot of mud and debris, there's also a lot of timber that has washed out of the mountains.

"And just the loss of some of those agricultural properties — there's a lot of grapevines totally ripped out of the ground — and loss of people's income, and jobs, and livelihoods.

"I'm sure it's going to take quite some time to recover from this."

Search-and-rescue specialists wear masks, because just standing by the road can be suffocating.

"The other thing we have in this valley, is some of the [properties] we search have quite a significant amount of asbestos in them," Inspector Hall said. 

"So we're just formulating a plan for how we de-layer those buildings."

When the firefighters have done everything they can, an excavator pulls off the bonnet and boot if they're stuck shut, and then flips the car over.

The firefighters also dig in the displaced mud and sediment nearby.

In this area, near Napier, there's a list of about 30 properties that need to be checked and cleared.

For the moment, this is their main task and the 25 Australian firefighters who've been deployed to New Zealand are part of the effort.

On this property, the firefighters have to pull apart and upturn at least two cars, as well as a shed where it's believed someone might have been living.

They didn't find anyone here, but New Zealand's prime minister has warned there are likely to be more fatalities.

Tracking down the missing

Over the last week, the number of people reported as uncontactable to New Zealand police has stayed well into the thousands.

On Monday, it was 6,500. 

But with each update, authorities are eager to emphasise that these people are only uncontactable, and there's another list currently of about 4,300 people who've been registered as safe.

Authorities say they're working as fast as they can to reconcile those reports and contact everyone they can.

On the ground, Fire and Emergency and the police are using the knowledge of locals to identify the people and homes they should be the most worried about.

Currently, the death toll stands at 11, but, speaking to people as they grapple with the destruction, many struggle to believe there aren't more.

Summoning the strength to clean up

Standing in their kitchen, as they work to salvage what they can, Wendy and Grant Williams break down recalling how, after the flood, they didn't know where their daughter-in-law Dale and two grandchildren were.

The high-set house is somehow still standing — Mrs Williams said it was raised after the 1938 flood — but water still went through up to about a metre high.

The trio had been house-sitting while Mr and Mrs Williams were on holiday and, when the flood came, there was no help when they called for it.

"So there's a hole there where she and the kids had to get up on the roof … she smashed a hole and climbed up and sat up there for most of the night."

Mrs Williams said: "There was no communication, everything had gone down and [our son] didn't know what had happened, so it took him a while to find them."

"Luckily, they got rescued by the Army about 3 hours later, but it must have been absolutely terrifying."

Despite what they've been through, the kids are mucking in with the clean-up, alongside other family members and people who have volunteered their labour and machinery.

And Mr and Mrs Williams have not lost their warm sense of hospitality, or their concern for others in the community.

"We were actually so lucky, some people lost everything," Mrs Williams said, through tears.

"At least we have a house to come back to and it will be fixable, it's just going to take some time."