Body found believed to be missing postie

11.30am

Police have found a body believed to be that of missing postie Erlinda Warrington.

Senior Sergeant Warwick Burr, of Masterton police, said the body was spotted in a stream from which Ms Warrington's utility vehicle was found last night.

Ten police officers began searching for Ms Warrington from about 8am today and the body was found soon after, Mr Burr said.

Yesterday, searchers failed to find Ms Warrington because the Wainuiomapu Stream was too swollen.

However, it dropped by about a metre overnight. The utility was found last night after water levels started to reduce.

Ms Warrington went missing yesterday during a violent storm that caused flooding and washed out roads.

She left her Bideford home, about 40km northeast of Masterton, at 5.30am for the 30 minute drive to work in Masterton but failed to arrive.

Neighbouring farmers found the utility vehicle she used for delivering mail on the opposite side of the road they had expected it would have been travelling.

The back windows were wound down indicating Mrs Warrington had scrambled clear of it and had tried to reach safety.

Her husband Les Warrington said earlier although he was still hoping his wife had somehow got to safety it was hard to see how she could have.

She could not swim and the biting southerly that continued all day yesterday would have cut her chances of survival.

On an earlier search of the area where the vehicle was eventually found, Mr Warrington had twice waded into the water and attempted to see if there was any sign of the ute.

It wasn't until the water subsided a little that searchers saw the roof of the vehicle.

Mr Warrington said the area where his wife had been lost was the same spot where a huge lake formed at Bideford in the early 1990s.

From the position of the recovered ute it seems likely Mrs Warrington, who had left her Maringi Road home before dawn to drive the 36km to her work in Masterton, had negotiated floods on the road only to have her passage blocked by a slip further on.

Mr Warrington said she must have turned round and tried to make it back home but had been trapped between the slip and rising floodwaters that swept over the ute.

She had a cellphone but it is not known whether she had attempted to call for help.

Police and volunteer searchers combed the area from about 9.30am yesterday when it became clear Mrs Warrington had run into trouble.

The search continued all day and at one time a helicopter was called in to scan the area for sightings of the ute.

Ms Warrington, a Filipino, was Mr Warrington's second wife and stepmother to his children, who include prominent Queensland jockey Jason Warrington.

Mr Warrington said the jockey had been contacted at his home in Toowoomba.

Ms Warrington had been delivering mail to rural customers for 15 years.

Fellow rural delivery contractor Bill Knight said "she was a real toiler".

The news of her disappearance had come as a real shock to other staff. "It's just too close to home," Mr Knight said.

There have been at least three other storm-related deaths this year.

* In January Christchurch mother-of-three Joanne Mary Davidson, 42, was killed when a severe gust of wind picked up her tent and threw her 60m against a house in Ngakuta Bay, in the Queen Charlotte Sound.

* Beverley Mira Freeman, 67, was killed when a huge mudslide hit her home at Bryan's Beach, Ohiwa Harbour, near Whakatane during the storms in July.

* Another woman Marilyn Erica Robinson, 55, of Rotorua was killed during the same storms after a large eucalyptus tree fell on her car impaling her at Pyes Pa near Tauranga.

Firemen believed the tree was toppled by an earthquake in the area and soil around its base had been loosened by the floods.

- NZPA