Bach collapses as seaside landslide leaves three injured
Three people have been injured after the bach they were inside collapsed in the rural Auckland township of Manukau Heads after being hit by a landslide yesterday.
Urban Search and Rescue worked to remove one person trapped inside. The person was rescued just after 2pm.
Dave Palmer, who owns a bach a few properties down, said he heard an ‘‘almighty crash’’ and rushed onto the beach shortly before midday.
‘‘I heard another noise and saw this little orange car come flying off the bridge – then the house came off behind it.’’
Palmer saw a man dragging someone onto the beach, followed by a distraught woman.
‘‘She told us her elderly mother was still inside, so we rushed in to get her. We got her out, but her legs had been crushed.’’
Palmer said the family had only arrived in the area for a holiday from Australia on Tuesday. His house was now behind police tape and was considered unsafe.
‘‘Slips are quite common here, but not usually a whole house.’’
Manukau Heads is a rural township on a peninsula in south Auckland, about 100km from the central city. Some roads into the peninsula were blocked due to slips from flooding overnight on Tuesday.
Firefighters were ferried across the Manukau Harbour aboard the Auckland Airport Emergency Service’s hovercraft to help them access the remote beach.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand shift manager Josh Pennefather said the alarm was raised shortly after midday yesterday. One person in a serious condition was taken to Auckland Hospital by a helicopter and one patient in a minor condition was taken to Middlemore Hospital by an ambulance, a St John spokesperson said.
The person who was trapped was airlifted to Middlemore Hospital in a serious condition.
Dozens of firefighters and police officers were at Orua Bay yesterday afternoon.
A group of locals said most of the houses in the area were baches.
‘‘The house involved gets booked out like an Airbnb.
‘‘We don’t know the people involved but they arrived just yesterday from Australia.’’
One woman said it was lucky the tide hadn’t been in when the land slip happened as the water goes right up against the bank.
‘‘It would’ve made the rescue very difficult. We’re safe here, but some of the houses on the cliff side have been evacuated we’ve been told.’’
The incident comes after
Auckland was hammered by rain on Tuesday night and into the early hours of yesterday morning.
Suburbs were inundated and motorways were flooded during the deluge, which came on the heels of Friday’s massive downpour.
The first one resident knew about the incident was when they heard two helicopters circling in the area.
When they went down to have a look they could see fire and emergency personnel and St John personnel at the site of the collapse.
‘‘For us, this isn’t just a one-off weather event – flooding has been ongoing for three years.
‘‘We’ve been asking the council to help us and warning them that something bad will happen without a proper [waste]water system,’’ they said.
On Friday and again yesterday morning, water levels reached over one metre in the area, they said. ‘‘I’m exhausted.’’
While they were on the phone to Stuff, a slip also occurred on the resident’s property.