Hundreds of people have been evacuated and many more face being forced to abandon their homes in New Zealand’s Canterbury region as heavy rains raise water levels and cause widespread flooding, writes The Guardian.

A state of emergency was declared for the entire Canterbury region and at least 300 homes were evacuated overnight as water levels rose in rivers across the region in a “one-in-100-year deluge”, local media reports said on Monday.

Several highways, schools and offices were closed and New Zealand’s Defence Forces deployed helicopters to rescue some people stranded in floods in the Ashburton area. Ashburton’s mayor, Neil Brown, said “half of Ashburton” would need to be evacuated if the river’s levees broke but there was “still quite a bit of capacity” in the river.

“We need it to stop raining to let those rivers drop”, said Brown, according to the New Zealand Herald.