Stricken residents tell their stories of disaster

A car disappearing under flood waters at Matata. Picture / Alan Gibson

Vladi Vladev had only just managed to get through waist-deep water into his Tauranga home when the torrents of mud and water chased him back out.

"I heard a big explosion and the front window just exploded.

"Then I saw the mud coming towards me and I just grabbed my daughter."

They were standing still but the Vale St house was moving under them, he said.

His son and wheelchair-bound daughter had only just been able to open the family's garage door to let their father in.

"We were trying to open the door for dad because he was soaked. He was coming in and we were about to close it when it all happened. It was a matter of seconds."

As the house rolled from under them, Mr Vladev pulled his daughter from her chair and ran with her in his arms out the garage door.

"The water was everywhere," she said.

Sitting yesterday watching her devastated parents pull belongings from their home, his daughter said it was the most terrifying experience of her life.

"It was like thunder that shakes you. I'm in the chair so I felt everything."

Their home is only a year old. Now they don't know if they will be able to live in it again.

They thought their dog Lucky had perished as they left to stay with friends, but when they returned to view the devastation they found a neighbour had rescued him.

Next door 77-year-old Pauleen Southee was also lucky to escape with her life.

As she lay in bed on Wednesday morning in the self-contained flat built on to her daughter's home, a mud slide came pouring through her window.

Her daughter Ann Collins and grandsons Sam, 17, and Josh, 15, received a call from Mrs Southee about lunchtime on Wednesday.

"She said the apartment's filling up with mud, you have to come home," Mrs Collins said.

She waded through waist-high water to get to her mother, but found she had been rescued by neighbours.

Behind the Collins' home now lies a gaping hole of mud, wood and trees - the remnants of a house that used to sit on the hill behind them.

The debris surges all the way into the living room and Mrs Collins says she does not know if her family will be able to return there to live.

Her mother's self-contained flat at the side of the house had only been built in January.

Further down Vale St, Shane Meyer and his family were clearing mud out of their garage.

Nearby, Cecil Smith's family were waiting for insurance agents to turn up.

The water went more than 20cm high in Mr Smith's home as he sat in his wheelchair, eventually moving to the couch to keep dry.

"It was okay. In two hours it was all gone," he said, surveying his sodden carpet.

Around the corner in Balmoral Tce, Daniel and Astrid Goldie have been allowed to return to their flat to get clothes.

Two houses on the hill came down on their block of flats about 1pm on Wednesday while they sat in their lounge.

"You could hear the breaking of the wood - it was like bones cracking. There was a roar then a crack," Mr Goldie said.

He watched the water rise around his flat coming closer every five minutes.

"The worst is the water coming at you. Watching the neighbours' car, the water had reached the tyre, then it came to the rim, then it took over the car," Mr Goldie said.

While residents in Vale St and Balmoral Tce salvaged what they could, Mike Bills and Andrew McIvor were trying to save their properties balanced precariously on the hilltop above in Lemon Grove Ave.

Mr McIvor ran down the street with plastic piping attached to drains to install so that when the next downpour arrived, the water could hopefully be diverted from the hillside.

His wife Kerri had called him to come home when the hillside and house in front of them fell away.

"I was out trying to save a mate's place across town."

While the pair and their friends tried to save their properties, the council called on them to do the same for houses in the rest of the street.

"All the neighbours ... we're all good friends," said Mr McIvor.

"It's a real close little community here and we all feel for each other."

Flood Helpline

0800 779 997