HOUSE FLOODED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 84, 6 October 1941, Page 8

HOUSE FLOODED

SILT TWO FEET DEEP

What was probably the worst darflage to a home during the recent heavy rain was caused by a slip about 3 a,m. on Friday. At the unfinished end of Mairangi Road, between Northland and Wadestown, a slip some 40ft wide. ■ well ever 100ft from top to bottom, and 10ft deep in places, fell at right angles into a natural watercourse, which it scoured out to a considerable depth, picking up enormous quantities of spoil and^ gorse for a distance of some 200 yards. The upper bed of the creek was not steep, but the sludgy quality of the big slip allowed it to travel until it reached a house at the end of Rose Street. The

sludge forced a door at the back of the house, and poured through it at a depth of 2ft. The interior ruin was appalling. The nicely-furnished home became a quagmire, with a chesterfield suite emerging from the yellow flood. The house was partially scraped out today, but the furniture outside showed the damage that had been v done. Silt was piled up four feet high against the back entrance, andl it was only the semi-liquid quality of the slip which saved the house from structural damage. A smaller slip leading from the back of a house on a rise nearby carried away the bridge over a small gully, thus cutting off the >house in the gully from the street. The first care of the occupier of the flooded house was to get his wife and children into safety. There must have'been anxious moments in the dark.