Family escapes mudslide

Press, 30 July 1985, Page 8

Family escapes mudslide

Blenheim reporter A Waikawa couple and their infant daughter narrowly missed being engulfed in a wall of mud, water and debris as they fled from their home on The Snout on Saturday afternoon. Mr Jim Nieolle, and his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter, Emma, launched a dinghy from their jetty and took to the water moments before the jetty was obliterated under the landslide. What remains of the house is now perched on the unstable edge of the bank, which shows every sign of continuing its 10m slide and following the rest of the hillside into Waikawa Bay. Heavy rain had fallen steadily in the area for four days. The only access to the site is by sea. Mr Nieolle said that he and Elizabeth were watching television about 2 p.m. on Saturday when the house started to move with a sound of breaking and cracking fibrolite. They grabbed Emma, aged 19 months, and ran out

to the patio. “By then the whole house was moving and things were spilling out and coming down the hill towards us,” said Mr Nieolle. “We ran from there down to the end of our jetty, which is about 15m long. We stepped on to the jetty and watched our house disintegrate in this massive wall of mud, trees and stuff. “We knew we could not stay there — it was blowing a howling southerly — so we jumped into our little dinghy. It had no bung, and I had the motor out,” he said. “We just got away from the jetty when the slip came down and annihilated the jetty and boatshed. The house was left on a cliff. Everything below it had dropped away.” Large water tanks bounced down like pingpong balls. “It was pretty horrific,” said Mr Nieolle. “It’s going to slip again. There is a big crack in the hillside at the back of the house so it will end up in the sea eventually,” he said. Mr E. J. Wilkes, of

Waikawa, who helped recover some furniture and personal effects from the site, said that the family was lucky to be alive. “If it had come down at night, I don’t know what would have happened to them,” he said. A relief fund set up by the Mayor of Picton, Mr A. J. Beaton, had brought in nearly ?300 by early yesterday. There have also been

offers of bedding and accommodation for the family. A similar fund was launched yesterday by the Mayor of Blenheim, Mr P. A. Taylor. More than 100 mm of rain fell in Picton and Waikawa between Friday afternoon and Saturday night. Another 60mm had been recorded in the preceding two days.