Slip at Tauranga

Press, 11 August 1979, Page 6

Slip at Tauranga

PA Tauranga Four houses have been! evacuated and two persons consider themselves lucky to be alive after a landslide took away part of the coastline at the Tauranga harbourside resort of Omokoroa on The landslide occurred just after 11a.m. on a section of the steep coastline about 800 m east of the Omokoroa Bowling Club.

It took away about 50 m of I cliffside. The debris from the| slip stretched out to sea 100 metres from the original! base of the cliffs. Just before 11am. Mrs Kay Hoyes noticed a large crack in the front garden of her family home in Bramley Drive, Omokoroa. The crack extended to the garden of

her mother-in-law’s property next door. She went next door and with her mother-in-law, Mrs Elsie Hoyes. went down to the beach to look up at the cliffs.

“We were just looking up at the cliffs when there was a really strange whooshing sound,” she said. “We realised the entire cliffs were about to fall. We just ran for our lives.” Seconds later the landslide Occurred, taking with it dozens of tall trees which had been planted years ago to stabilise the land. "Fortunately we ran in the right direction because if we had headed the other way iwe would certainly have been hit by the landslide,” I said Mrs Hoyes.

Mr Hoyes said yesterday that another 2m of his property's front lawn had disappeared overnight. More cracks had appeared on the clifftop and it was likely the slip would extend back to the house in a short time.

“By the time it has finished it will probably reach right back to the road and the houses will probably go over the cliff,” said Mr Hoyes. The house at the bottom of the road had only re cently been completed and now the owner had been .forced to abandon it.

His parents’ house had shifted on its foundations on Thursday night and it seemed the slip would inevitably take the houses over the cliff.