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A national state of emergency has been declared in New Zealand after widespread damage from Cyclone Gabrielle, the country's worst storm in generations.

Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty made the declaration at 8.43am on Tuesday as Kiwis woke to flooding, power loss, road closures and phone network outages from the massive storm.

Thousands of people have been evacuated across the country, at least 225,000 were without power, and fears are held for the lives of several New Zealanders.

And still, the full extent of Cyclone Gabrielle's wrath is unclear, with some isolated communities - including Wairoa and towns in Tairawhiti - unable to be reached by land, sea or air, or communicated with.

"We don't have a full understanding of the impact there. And that makes us feel anxious," Mr McAnulty said.

What is known is that much of the Hawke's Bay is under water, with rescues by police boat and helicopter taking place when weather allowed on Tuesday.

"I've been in the region over 20 years and this is by far the biggest (storm) ... people have not seen a storm like this. It's a very, very significant event," Hawke's Bay civil defence spokesman Ian Maxwell told Radio NZ.

It is just the third time a national declaration has been issued, after the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The storm is New Zealand's worst since 1988, and the damage may surpass the devastation of Cyclone Bola in that year.

"It's the most extreme weather event that we've experienced in a very long time," Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said.

"Our focus right now is on the immediate response. It's on making sure that people have a roof over their head. That they have a meal. That their families are well cared for."

The cyclone, which formed in the Coral Sea last week, moved steadily towards New Zealand and passed along the northern rim of North Island between Sunday and Tuesday.

By 7pm local, it was east of the NZ mainland, but its massive size continued to whip up destructive winds all across North Island.

MetService spokeswoman Lisa Murray told Radio NZ huge rainfall and gale-force winds meant "there's a lot of places in trouble".

"It really is widespread across the North Island."

Late on Tuesday, a person was found dead on the beach at Bay View, north of Napier, in one of the hardest-hit areas.

The death is yet to be connected to the storm.

Grave fears are also held for a volunteer firefighter who was inside a house when it collapsed in Muriwai, west of Auckland, on Tuesday morning.

The navy is also searching for two boats in waters north of Auckland.

News outlet Stuff reported people were trapped in cars along the flooded State Highway 5 between Napier and Taupo, where communications are patchy.

Around a dozen seasonal workers from Tonga were trapped on top of buildings all day when floodwaters rose near Hastings.

Landslips, treefall and flooding have deeply impacted infrastructure, with power transmission agency Transpower said it was facing a "grid emergency" with some outages to last "days to weeks".

High winds have also forced mass-scale flight cancellations, displacing tens of thousands.

Transport authority Waka Kotahi reports more than 40 road closures, including State Highway 1 in several places and key arterial roads in the Coromandel and East Coast.

Fire and Emergency NZ reported 1842 storm-related emergency calls, but others are unable to communicate, with hundreds of mobile phone towers knocked out.

On top of physical damage to property and livelihood, Mr Hipkins said he expected a serious mental health toll from NZ's latest disaster.

"If you think about the last sort of decade and a half or so, we've had everything from earthquakes, natural disasters, volcanic eruptions, weather events. It is a lot," he said.

"We've dealt with everything."

The storm prompted parties to cancel the first week of parliament for the year, allowing the government to focus on the storm and for MPs to be in their communities.

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A man in his 60s has died after being pulled from the water at the popular NSW south coast tourist town of Kiama.

Emergency services were called to a rock pool about 5.40pm on Monday following reports a man had been dragged from the surf unresponsive.

Police said bystanders began CPR before paramedics arrived, but the man could not be revived.

The man is yet to be formally identified.

The incident follows the death of a 75-year-old man who drowned after being struck by a wave while swimming at Nambucca Heads on the north coast on Sunday.

Last month, a man and woman in their 40s drowned last week at an unpatrolled beach on the Central Coast.

© AAP 2023

United States military fighter jets have shot down an octagonal object over Lake Huron, the Pentagon says, the latest incident since a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon put North American security forces on high alert.

It was the fourth unidentified flying object to be shot down over North America by a US missile in a little more than a week.

China's foreign ministry said it had no information on the latest three flying objects shot down by the US.

US Air Force General Glen VanHerck told reporters the military has not been able to identify what the three most recent objects are, how they stay aloft or where they are coming from.

"We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason," VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command, said.

VanHerck would not rule out aliens or any other explanation.

"I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out," he said.

Another defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military had not seen any evidence that the objects were extraterrestrial.

On President Joe Biden's order, a US F-16 fighter shot down the object at 2.42pm local time over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border, Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said in a statement.

Although it did not pose a military threat, the object could have potentially interfered with domestic air traffic as it was travelling at 6100 metres and might have had surveillance capabilities, Ryder said.

The object appeared to be octagonal, with strings hanging off but no discernible payload, a US official speaking on condition of anonymity said.

The object was believed to be the same as one recently detected over Montana near sensitive military sites, prompting the closure of US airspace, the Pentagon said.

The military will try to recover the object downed over Lake Huron to learn more about it, VanHerck told reporters.

He said it likely fell into Canadian waters.

The incident raised questions about the spate of unusual objects that have appeared over North American skies in recent weeks and raised tensions with China.

"We need the facts about where they are originating from, what their purpose is and why their frequency is increasing," said US Representative Debbie Dingell.

US officials identified the first object as a Chinese surveillance balloon and shot it down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.

On Friday, a second object was shot down over sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska.

A third object was destroyed over Canada's Yukon on Saturday, with investigators still hunting for the wreckage.

"The security of citizens is our top priority and that's why I made the decision to have that unidentified object shot down," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Sunday.

North America has been on guard against aerial intrusions following the appearance of the white, eye-catching Chinese airship over American skies earlier this month.

That 60-metre-high balloon - which Americans have accused Beijing of using to spy on the US - caused an international incident, leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken to call off a planned trip to China hours before he was set to depart.

Pentagon officials said they have been scrutinising radar more closely since then.

China denies the first balloon was being used for surveillance and says it was a civilian research craft.

It condemned the US for shooting it down off the coast of South Carolina.

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told US broadcaster ABC officials think two of the latest objects were smaller balloons than the original one.

The White House said only that the recently downed objects "did not closely resemble" the Chinese balloon, echoing Schumer's description of them as "much smaller".

© RAW 2023