Maureen Goodman stands by a sign for the Napier-Taihape Rd, where she became stranded with her partner George Luke (inset) during Cyclone Gabrielle. Photos / Facebook / Connull Lang
A couple who got stuck between slips on the Taihape-Napier Rd on the night of Cyclone Gabrielle left their vehicle because they feared another landslide would sweep the car down a hill.
But instead of walking to help or safety, they stumbled into a “terrifying” two-day hell of waist-deep mud and debris, which left them exhausted and shiveringly cold.
“The further we walked the bigger the landslides became,” Maureen Goodman told a coronial inquiry today, which heard evidence about the death of her partner George Luke, the father of professional rugby league star Issac Luke.
Goodman and Luke were airlifted by helicopter separately to Hastings Hospital on February 16, 2023, more than 48 hours after Cyclone Gabrielle slammed into the eastern North Island, causing multiple deaths.
Luke reached hospital alive but died there from hypothermia and multiple organ failure.
Coroner Erin Woolley is conducting a long-running coronial inquiry into 19 deaths associated with Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods two weeks earlier.
Today, Goodman told the inquiry that she and Luke were driving home to Hawke’s Bay from Rotorua on the night of February 13, 2023, as the cyclone swept down the North Island.
They detoured through Waiouru and the Taihape-Napier Rd because the Taupō-Napier highway was closed.
About 11.45pm, they found their way along the Taihape-Napier Rd blocked by a slip. As they reversed to turn around, the slope behind them came down.
“We were trapped between landslides,” Goodman said.
They had no cellphone coverage in the remote location.
Fearing being hit by another slide, they agreed they would leave the vehicle and walk to find help.
Goodman said the couple were constantly having to negotiate slips and debris as they walked in the rain towards the Napier end of the road.
By 4am on February 14 they were cold and exhausted. When they stopped to rest, they could hear rumbling and cracking from the slope above.
Goodman thought they would be killed by a tree falling on them. She said Luke covered her with his body to protect her and also put his leather jacket over her to try to keep her warm.
When daylight came, the pair found themselves on a hill above the road. They had become disoriented, thinking they were scaling a large slip.
“We were stuck … between landslips which went as far as the eye could see,” Goodman said.
Continuing their trek, Luke, 65, lost his shoes in the mud and was then unable to force his way through dense blackberry bushes towards a river.
He stopped and Goodman left him to force her way forward and find help.
Luke, a diabetic who was without his medication, was hallucinating by this time.
Goodman spent two further nights trying to find her way through forestry tracks and the bush, sipping water from tree leaves, seeing no one and at one point having to wade through a waist-deep flooded paddock.
When darkness fell she made herself a makeshift bivouac and tried to keep warm.
“What an extraordinary person you are to have survived that,” Coroner Woolley told Goodman.
Circling back to near where her partner remained, Goodman was able to call out to him and get a response but she was unwilling to cross the river back to his location.
Goodman said she started talking to her deceased mother, asking her for guidance, and recited the Lord’s Prayer in Māori.
She said she saw a little bird, chirping loudly, and followed it for half an hour. Five minutes later, she found herself back on the main road.
As she started to walk along it, a deer jumped into her path, which she took to be another sign.
She found an empty energy drink bottle, which she cleaned and filled with water to drink.
She tried to remember the names of forestry roads she passed so she could tell people where Luke was, and put the coloured bottle down as a marker.
Goodman then heard a voice and saw a figure in the distance, beyond a final landslide. She called out: “Help, please help me.”
Using a term of respect for an older woman, the young woman called back, “Whaea, what are you doing down there?”
The woman, whose name was Monica, helped Goodman over the last landslide, put her in her car and gave her water.
They then drove out and told road workers that Luke was still in the ranges.
As Goodman was talking to the road workers, a local resident came and said she needed to go to his home, where she could be cared for by his wife, a nurse.
A rescue helicopter later took her to hospital.
Luke was found and airlifted out the same day.
Rescuers said finding the coloured bottle left beside the road as a marker “eliminated kilometres” of their search for him.
Goodman and Luke were near each other in Hastings Hospital when he died.
Goodman said she felt “guilty” thinking of Luke being alone after she left him.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” Coroner Woolley told her.
“Everything you did to try to help your partner was extraordinary.”
Speaking of her inquiry, the coroner said: “I hope something good comes of this process so that people don’t find themselves in that position again.”
A photo taken after the cyclone had passed, shown to the inquiry, showed the couple’s car still in place on the road.
Goodman paid tribute to her partner, a rugby league stalwart and coach.
“George was taken far too soon,” she said.
“But he will always be remembered for his love and kindness and the way he put his whānau first.”
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay.