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
The three Australian tourists were trying to escape when a massive landslide hit the bach they were staying in and dragged them 15m down a cliff.
Cheryl Gilroy, her husband Darren and her elderly mother were renting a bach in Orua Bay when the cliff above them gave way and knocked the house off its foundations and on to the beach below with the three of them still inside.
The landslide last Wednesday saw Gilroy’s mother, who is in her 80s, trapped beneath 3m of rubble for two hours while rescuers worked to get her out. She was flown to Middlemore hospital in critical condition where she continues to recover.
Gilroy and her husband were able to escape from the wreckage although Darren was left with serious injuries and is recovering in Auckland City Hospital.
A GoFundMe page has now been set up by a family friend to help cover the medical costs the Australian trio are facing while in hospital as well as the bills which are stacking up for their small business in Australia.
On the fundraising page, organiser Sabine Doroudgar said they sustained “terrible injuries” while “trying to escape and going down with the house”.
“What was meant to be a lovely family holiday with Cheryl’s elderly Mother turned into a horrific accident resulting in long term recovery from all involved,” she said.
“The ongoing medical costs and time away from their business is going to take a major toll on Cheryl and Darren. Everything is so unsure on when they can return to the business.”
Doroudgar said she set up the fundraising page in the hope that friends, members of the community and “even strangers” could donate and help the family recover without worrying about where the money would come from.
The slip was one of many around Auckland after record-breaking rain pummelled the region on January 27 causing flooding that claimed four lives, decimated houses and saw cliffs around the city collapse.
Dr Gary Payinda, a medic on board one of the rescue helicopters which were called to the scene last week, said the house looked like it had been hit by a tornado.
Payinda described how the Urban Search and Rescue Team had to use metal struts to hold up the roof of the house while medics tended to Gilroy’s mother and rescue crews freed her from the wreckage.
An Urban Search and Rescue team used steel poles to hold up the roof of the Orua Bay bach caught in a landslide while they rescued a woman trapped in the rubble. Photo / Bay of Plenty Fire and Emergency
“You just see a house that looks like a tornado has struck it. It’s just in pieces. It’s just a pile of rubble with the roof still in one piece but ready to tip over. The roof was perpendicular to the sand but being held up by very tiny pieces of debris and what we were afraid of was that it would have fallen down 4-5m on the patient and on rescuers,” he told the Herald last week.
“It was a very serious injury and she had been pinned down under all this wreckage for a long time.”
He said the crew from a second helicopter treated Gilroy and her husband and flew them to hospital.
Andy Fennell was one of the first people on the scene after the bank gave way.
He told Newshub he tended to a man with a badly broken leg that had exposed the bone so he fashioned a makeshift tourniquet to help stop the bleeding.
“He looked like he was losing a fair bit of blood so I took my shoelaces out of my boots and tried to stem the blood flow.”
