 "New Zealand: Heavy rain triggers landslide at campsite; voices of those buried heard beneath rubble")
A landslide ripped through a rain-lashed campsite in northern New Zealand on Thursday, leaving several people missing as emergency crews raced against time amid unstable ground conditions.
Local media footage showed thick mud and debris burying and crushing a shower block at the campsite, which sits at the base of the extinct Mount Maunganui volcano. Emergency officials said voices were heard from beneath the rubble in the immediate aftermath of the slide.
“Whilst the land’s still moving there, they’re in a rescue mission,” Assistant Police Commissioner Tim Anderson told reporters at the scene, as quoted by AFP. “I can’t be drawn on numbers. What I can say is that it is single figures,” he added.
The landslide struck multiple campervans and the shower block at the North Island site, an area that has been battered by heavy rainfall in recent days.
Rescue efforts hampered by unstable ground
Campers at the site initially tried to dig through the debris themselves and heard voices calling for help, Fire and Emergency commander William Pike said. “Our initial fire crew arrived and were able to hear the same,” he told reporters.
Rescue teams were later forced to pull everyone back from the area due to the ongoing risk of further earth movement. Asked whether voices had been heard since then, Pike said: “Not that I know of, no.”
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View AllEmergency services continue to monitor the unstable terrain and are preparing to resume search and rescue operations once conditions are deemed safe.
Nearby, visiting Canadian tourist Dion Siluch, 34, said he was relaxing at the Mount Hot Pools complex when the landslide struck. “I was in a massage at that mountain pools and the whole room started shaking,” he told AFP.
“When I walked out, there was a caravan in the pool, and there’s a mudslide that missed me by about 30 feet,” Siluch said.
“It was all very confusing. I wasn’t sure if someone had driven off the road and into the pool. It took me a while to realise that the mountain had collapsed and had pushed everything into the pool,” he added.
Siluch said he had noticed another landslip about an hour earlier but had not paid much attention to it at the time.
Police later arrived by helicopter and ordered people to evacuate the area, he said. “I feel bad for the people affected.”
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