A Taranaki family driving to Auckland in darkness escaped by seconds as a cliff face collapsed onto State Highway 3 in the Awakino Gorge early Saturday, waved to safety by a road worker who sprinted at their truck yelling for them to turn back.
Nikita Phillips, her partner and one of their young daughters had left New Plymouth at 3am, heading north for what began as a work trip and became a family outing.
They reached the gorge between 4am and 5am in steady rain, then hit a standstill just past a stop-and-go point when the road ahead gave way.
"All I can remember is him just going, 'oh my god, hun, look, the cliff's coming down'," she told 1News.
Her partner jumped out to look as she watched the driver ahead abandon his truck and a road worker come running.
"He's yelling and waving and pointing going 'go, go, go, like get out of here, go now'," she said.
"You could just hear the earth just crack open. It sounded like 1000 pebbles hitting a tin roof and just with a big roar behind it."
With debris spilling across the road, her partner reversed and worked the large truck through a three-point turn on the narrow road, the river on one side and no way of knowing how far the slip would spread.
"We're trying to like go back, forth, back, forth to turn this massive truck around," she said, adding they passed older slips worsening in the rain and water rushing across the road.
Phillips said the family did not fully register what mode they had gone into.
"It was like survival, stress, like fear, because we're like mum and dad and we've got our baby with us as well," she said.
"You're in the middle of a gorge in the middle of nowhere, there's no reception, it's dark, it's early hours in the morning, and all of a sudden the road gives way in front of you."
Gorge closed overnight, one lane hoped for Sunday
NZTA said crews were working to clear about 500 cubic metres of slip material from SH3 at the Awakino Gorge, between Mokau and Piopio, which would remain closed overnight and through Sunday.
The agency said crews expected to open the road to one lane from 6pm Sunday, weather permitting, with a further update to confirm the time. It said the day's slip lay north of a larger one crews had been working on since April.
Elsewhere, SH43 Forgotten World Highway remained closed between Whangamōmona and Taumarunui, with multiple slips, mud slides and debris. That stretch was to stay shut through Monday while the damage was assessed and cleared, with an update expected early Monday afternoon.
SH43 remained open between Stratford and Whangamōmona, and SH4 between Whanganui and Raetihi, though NZTA urged drivers on both to take care and expect possible slips.
Phillips credited the road worker with changing the outcome.
"If it wasn't for his actions, it could have been a different story this morning," she said, adding she later learned he had stopped the truck ahead to clear debris from the road. "He was in a panic for his own life."
Phillips said the ordeal had left her appreciating road crews in a way she hadn't before, and pushed back at people who complain when roads close in bad weather.
"They're not just road workers turning cones or turning the lollipop," she said.
"They're out there monitoring those roads in wet conditions day and night, on shift work, night shift, day shift, spotting and keeping an eye on things for our safety."
"When they shut the roads down, it's not the end of the world," she said. "It's for our safety at the end of the day."
She had one request for the man on the ground.
"Give that guy a pay rise, well deserved," she said. "Send him on a holiday that's all paid for. It's the least you could do."
The family felt nothing of the magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck near Taumarunui at 4.51am, which Geonet says is the largest recorded in that area.
They only learned of it after reaching cellphone reception and calling ahead.
"Did yous not feel that?" she recalled her partner's boss asking.
"We're like, no, we don't feel anything."
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