Slips cause chaos, 4 rescued
The son of an elderly man whose Coromandel house has been red-stickered due to a slip says he owes a debt of gratitude to the handyman who rescued his father.
A massive slip came down yesterday morning behind the back of 95-year-old Dennis Raine’s home in Thornton Bay along State Highway 25.
Raine’s son Clive told the Herald that the landslide had gone right up against the back of his father’s house and the pressure of the slip was causing the home to creak.
Clive Raine said at the time of the slip, Dennis was sleeping and had his hearing aids out.
“He did not hear the slip. It was his Thames handyman who came out to check on him, woke him and alerted authorities,” Clive Raine said.
“We are just eternally grateful . . . he [the handyman] went above and beyond to make a special trip out just to make sure he was okay.”
The slip wreaked havoc on the road, having smashed into the back of another home, causing multiple evacuations and red stickers to be issued. A police spokesperson said the landslip was reported around 8.20am.
Another home, which sits above Raine’s, is also teetering on the edge of the cliff.
“So there was every possibility that house could actually come down the cliff on top of his,” Clive Raine said.
“It’s a little bit sad but I guess the good news is that he’s come out of it alive.”
He said his father, who is an artist, was in a state of shock and couldn’t grab anything before being taken out of the house.
“He’s got all sorts of family heirlooms and documents and everything else and they just basically had to grab him in the clothes he just put on and extract him from the house.”
The house has now been taped up and red-stickered but Clive Raine said his brother was able to retrieve some possessions when he picked up their father, who has lived in the house since the 90s and lived alone following the passing of his wife in 2009.
Sadly, Clive Raine suspects that the house will now have to be demolished.
“I’ve got a horrible feeling that he won’t be able to go back there and that’s devastating,” he said.
The Coromandel was in the firing line from heavy rain which again wreaked havoc across Northland and Auckland overnight yesterday and yesterday morning. A red heavy warning was in effect for the district.
Meanwhile, three people have been injured — two seriously — after
a bach at an Auckland beach was crushed in a dramatic landslide, one of dozens of slips that have wreaked havoc following more heavy rainfall in the region.
Six fire trucks and crews as well as Auckland Airport’s hovercraft with search and rescue personnel raced to the scene of the landslide, at Orua Bay Beach at the Manukau Heads, on the Awhitu Peninsula. One of the three
injured people was trapped for more than two hours and was eventually freed about 2.15pm.
A seriously-injured person was being flown to Middlemore Hospital and another in a minor condition was being taken there by ambulance, a spokesperson for St John Ambulance said. The other seriously injured person was flown to Auckland Hospital.
The dramatic rescue comes as
slips and fallen trees cause headaches for Aucklanders following more devastating rain earlier yesterday. Homes and motorways were flooded again, causing travel chaos.
In one piece of good news, for parents perhaps, schools in the Auckland region are able to reopen today. But there is little else to cheer, with news that 168 homes have now been red-stickered.
Meanwhile, Metservice says the front moving southwards over the North Island will bring further heavy rain to Bay of Plenty and Mount Taranaki today. — NZ Herald