The owner of a Northland bach said he could see a landslip forming in the early hours of the morning when he knew it was time to get out.
Simon Donelley said there were three people in the bach he had owned for 10 years when the weather bore down hard in Ōakura.
“We were there watching the rain, basically,” Donelley said, gesturing towards the window.
“At about 5.50am, we just started to see it slowly coming down the hill. It was six inches up the window and we decided to get out.”
The settlement, about 48km north of Whangārei, was among the hardest hit by the recent severe weather in Northland.
Communities along the east coast of the region have been cut off after torrential rain washed out roads and bridges overnight, leaving widespread flooding and damage.
When the slip hit the bach, Donelley said he heard “a bang” as they were sitting nearby in their car.
“Glass was breaking and obviously all the framing was smashing and that. Our neighbours could hear it.”
He said his next steps would be to salvage belongings out of the property, while continuing to assess the damage.
"Not sure if it is worth fixing. Probably not. Probably,,, definitely not."
Spa bath 'floating in the ocean'
Nearby, resident Elaine told 1News locals spotted a "blue thing bobbling in" from out at sea earlier today.
“It ended up coming right in, and some of the locals pulled it ashore.”
The “blue thing”, as it turns out, was an entire spa bath.
“We don’t know where it has come from… it’s actually very clean, nobody wants it, but it’s there.”
“Someone must miss it… it’s not every day you see a spa bath floating in the ocean.”
Community hall damaged
At the Ōakura Community Hall, chairman Glenn Ferguson told 1News he was "devastated" to see the property had been damaged.
Ferguson said the hall had just been upgraded, and was recently set to be unveiled to the community.
The hall means a "tremendous amount" to the community, he said.
"There's quiz nights, they play pickleball here, there's weddings, there's unveilings, people hire it when they come to the beach together as a big family... it means a lot to a lot of people."
Ferguson added he has never seen damage like this in the region.
"I have been coming here all my life, and I have never seen it as bad as this. Never."
Northpower said both overhead and underground equipment was affected by landslips during yesterday's weather event, which caused outages.
"At the height of the outage, 750 connections were without power," it said.
"Power was restored to all customers progressively throughout the day yesterday, with all customers fully restored last night."
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