A large slip blocked one lane of State Highway 11 between Kawakawa and Opua on Thursday.
The Kawakawa Fire Brigade was called out at 5.30am after a motorist discovered the slip on the Kawakawa side of the summit of Lemon's Hill, with firefighters managing traffic until roading contractors arrived.
Chief Fire Officer Wayne Martin said the initial concern was that the slip was still moving, and that it might have been necessary to close both lanes, but when daylight came it was deemed to be safe.
Traffic was reduced to one lane throughout the morning as contractors worked to clear the highway, before an engineer assessed the slip's stability.
It wasn't the Kawakawa brigade's first call-out of the day. At 4.30am a crew responded to a blaze in Moerewa, which Mr Martin said turned out to be someone having a rubbish fire when he thought no one would notice. He put it out himself.
