Landslide in suburban street a 'huge disaster'

By Derek Cheng


A landslide which slammed into a garage and left at least one Lower Hutt house on the brink of slipping away has been described by the city's mayor as a "huge disaster".

Four houses in suburban Kelson were evacuated last night after one slid down a hill, threatening the three others.

Hutt City mayor David Ogden visited the site this morning and said it was a "huge disaster for the people here".

"When you get this amount of rain, you're going to get land movement," he said.

One of the homeowners, Peter Pritchard, said a neighbour saw a small slip at about 8pm and banged on their door.

"We went out to look on the backyard and saw a large piece of land go," he said.

He and his wife, son-in-law and three grandchildren are now staying with neighbours and friends in the meantime.

"There is not much we can do except wait.

"We can't think much about it now and I don't think we'll realise for a while just what's happening. The question is, where is it going to finish?"

Mr Pritchard has lived in the house for 40 years and said he had lost a third of his land and most of his backyard into the gully.

"It's like something you'd see in the movies."

Originally posted by Willoughby:
Yes quite possible indeed.. Alexandra (climate very similar to Orange, NSW) only got to -1C under fog in June this year. Then places like Omarama, Queenstown, Lumsden and Ophir through Central Otago have recorded many maximum's under freezing in the past.

Weather costs in millions
10 August 2006
By MIKE STEERE and the DOMINION POST

New Zealand has suffered one of its most destructive and expensive winters, with heavy rain and snow costing the country millions of dollars.


The Insurance Council said yesterday that recent snowstorms in the South Island were the worst in New Zealand's history, with the repair bill estimated at $50 million.

Now, slips and flooding were causing massive problems in the North Island.

A woman was lucky not to have been sitting in her four-wheel-drive vehicle when it was partly buried in a 200-tonne slip in Wellington yesterday.

Xiaguang Yu's car was shunted part way across the road in Kelburn, a tyre was blown out and a window was smashed as broken rocks crashed into it. The slip, which came off a 10m-high bank, blocked the road for more than an hour.

A cracked, slow-leaking sewer pipe might have caused another slip that has left a Lower Hutt house teetering on the edge of destruction, a leading geologist says.

Grant Dellow, of Crown research institute GNS, inspected the landslide – one of at least 300 in the Wellington region this winter – in Kelson yesterday.

Steady rain yesterday morning saw chunks of land continue to slide into Speedys Stream. Several more metres of the Nations' house now dangles over the edge.

Insurance Council chief executive Chris Ryan said the weather pattern this winter should be viewed as a wake-up call. The wet winter had lasted so long that soil that previously would not have slipped away from slopes was now creating slips in areas that have not experienced them before.

On top of the $50m expected to be paid out for the snowstorms in Canterbury and Otago recently, the Insurance Council had paid out $22m for the Coromandel "weather bomb", $112m for the Manawatu floods, $58m for Queenstown flooding, $10m for Greymouth tornadoes and $30m for recent floods in Matata and Tauranga...
http://stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3759786a10,00.html

HEAVY SNOW EXPECTED FOR NORTH ISLAND CENTRAL PLATEAU A west to southwest flow over central New Zealand is expected to become stronger and colder overnight and early Monday morning. Snow showers are expected to become heavier overnight and up 20cm of snow is possible down to 800 metres over the Central Plateau in the 24 hours from 9pm Sunday with 10 to 15cm possible in a 6 hour period during Monday morning. People in the area are advised to watch out for hazardous driving conditions.

HEAVY SNOW FORECAST FOR FIORDLAND SOUTHLAND SOUTH OTAGO AND THE
DUNEDIN HILLS
A bitterly cold southwest airstream is expected to spread over the
South Island tomorrow (Monday), with snow showers likely to sea level
in the far south and heavy falls down to about 200 metres.

People in these areas are advised to watch out for hazardous travelling
conditions and to stay up to date with the latest forecasts.