Floods Trap Travellers

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31327, 25 March 1967, Page 1

Floods Trap Travellers

(New Zealand Press Association) < AUCKLAND, March 24. Floods and slips trapped about 100 Easter holiday-makers, most of them Aucklanders, at Hikuai, on the Coromandel Peninsula, overnight on Thursday.

Many slept in their cars. About 30 stayed in the Hikuai hall and others in private homes when they found the road ahead to Tairua covered to a depth of six feet by floodwaters. And behind the travellers, some of them with young children, the newly-opened Kopu-Hikuai road had been closed by slips after heavy rain.

Local residents helped with food and cups of tea and many of the stranded families began returning home today by way of Waihi. Ministry of Works men were fighting a losing battle against slips on the KopuHikuai road from first light today, and it may be three days before the road is reopened. At one point half a hillside had fallen across the road and more earth fell at every bite heavy earth-moving

machines took at the obstacle. Some families, determined to reach baches at Tairua and further north, abandoned their cars temporarily and went on by boat. A few, unprepared to risk the boat trip with children, stayed again at the Hikuai

Hall tonight in the hope that the floodwaters would go down. But late This afternoon the level of the water was reported to be steady. The bad weather left most major roads on the Coromandel Peninsula either closed or in poor condition.