Aerial footage reveals the destruction of a building after it collapsed following a landslide in Orua Bay Beach at Manukau Heads - trapping a person for more than two hours.
Video / Pool
A rescuer has described a scene of utter devastation after a house collapsed under the weight of a “massive landslide”, trapping an elderly woman for more than two hours, as major slips continue to cause havoc around Auckland.
Dramatic aerial photos by the Herald have also revealed the utter destruction at Orua Bay Beach at Manukau Heads.
Three people were injured, two seriously, after the structure collapsed. The photos show a major slip behind the building, which is on the shoreline.
Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter critical flight paramedic Marcel Driessen was one of the first people on the scene to help.
“When you got to the scene you could see you could see a massive landslide,” Driessen said.
“With this house ... just rubble on the bottom, that was a house once and in between all the other houses ... it was just totally demolished.”
The Orua Bay house was reduced to rubble after a landslide tore through it. Photo / Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust
Two patients, one man and one woman, were sitting to the side, he explained.
“There was a chap that was just covered and cut [with] some bruises and was pretty pale and yeah, it looked like he’d been through the wringer,” Driessen said.
He said the lady sitting beside him was in shock but not as injured as the man.
On the scene, Driessen soon got a better idea of what happened before the landslide tore through the bach.
“There’s three people in the house, all adults, and they heard a bit of a rumble and the whole house shook and I think someone yelled out to start running,” Driessen said.
“Then the whole thing just got crunched to the ground and it sounds like the chap we looked at was on the outer side of it, so he wasn’t trapped in the rubble but got pretty injured as he tumbled through.
“The elderly lady, she was trapped in the rubble and was trapped for quite some time but there were some beams and parts of the structure that were protecting her in a way as well from further injury ... she was stuck I think from her legs.”
Three people are injured after a building collapsed in Orua Bay Beach at Manukau Heads. Photo / Michael Craig
As firefighters and an Urban Search and Rescue crew fought to free the elderly woman, Driessen and his team transported the seriously injured man via a ute to the Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter to be flown to hospital.
A Fire and Emergency (FENZ) spokesperson said six firetrucks were sent to the scene of the structure collapse, which they said was caused by a landslide.
One person was trapped for more than two hours, the spokesperson said.
“They were freed at approximately 2.15pm and transported to hospital. Five USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) personnel were called to the scene to assist with the retrieval of the trapped individual.”
Two patients suffered serious injuries and one other suffered minor injuries.
A seriously-injured person was being flown to Middlemore Hospital and another in a minor condition was being taken there by ambulance, a spokesperson for St John Ambulance said. The other seriously injured person was flown to Auckland Hospital.
Auckland International Airport also assisted in the rescue, sending in a hovercraft with four additional USAR personnel.
The scene from the collapsed building in Orua Bay Beach at Manukau Heads after the landslide. Photo / Michael Craig
A geo-technician and structural engineer attended, the FENZ spokesperson said, to assess the risk to other buildings, which resulted in five other houses being evacuated as a precaution.
An Orua Bay local told the Herald she understood an elderly couple were involved in the collapse, with a man suffering a badly broken leg and an elderly woman was trapped.
