Driver tells of her fear during landslip
A driver has told of her terror as a ‘massive’ landslip pushed her car off the road and into a fence overlooking a steep drop.
The slip happened on Otaraoa Rd, Tikorangi, early yesterday and blocked both lanes of the road.
The woman driver, who asked not to be named, said she was driving around 5:45am when she saw dirt flying down the hill towards her.
‘‘I didn’t realise but it [the slip] had picked up my car and was pushing me over, right on the fence line.’’
It was still dark and the landslip meant she couldn’t see the fence when her car came to a stop, leaving her panicked that she was teetering on the edge of a steep drop, she said.
‘‘I wouldn’t have survived it. I was scared to open my car door.’’
Residents in the area were fed up by the years of slips making the road dangerous to drive on, she said.
New Plymouth District Council infrastructure manager David Langford said they had carried out improvement works on the road in 2014.
The council was almost at the end of making agreements with land owners along the road to be able to gain access to the land next to the road to better secure the bank against further slips, he said.
‘‘It’s an area where we have got a known issue - the amount of work we could do was really limited because of the steepness of the land on either side of the road.’’
Thursday and Friday’s wild weather and high winds were unfortunate because otherwise the work would likely have been done before another slip occurred, Langford said.
Council had some of the work for the area already planned out, including removing dangerous trees along the road and diverting rain water run off, he said.
Council contractor Fulton Hogan had cleared one lane by 2pm and hoped to have two lanes opened up for traffic by the end of the day, Langford said.
Emergency works were being carried out to clear trees at the top of the bank which would have likely fallen down the bank in strong winds, he said.