Two houses were evacuated after heavy rain in the weekend's storm brought down a slip on Ladbrooke Drive in Newlands, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The fate of two houses in Newlands continue to hang in the balance after a land slip threatens to make them unliveable.
A storm dubbed a one-in-10-year rainfall event caused damage across the Wellington region at the weekend.
MetService meteorologist Rob Kerr said the area got about 100mm of rain in 15 hours, ending with a downpour on Saturday afternoon.
"Heavy-ish rain fell on and off for most of the day and then bang, that really super-heavy blast came through right at the end."
Kerr said it was a once-in-a-decade rainfall.
The weather caused two slips on Ladbrooke Drive, Newlands.
Wellington City Council spokesman Richard MacLean said insurers and council inspectors are currently looking at the aftermath of the slip and whether the homes are damaged.
"At the moment there's so much slip debris around the houses that they can't be occupied."
MacLean said the process to check the safety of the houses is likely to take a few days.
Due to the large amount of slip material around the buildings they are looking at bringing earthmoving equipment to clear rubble, he said.
"It is one of those situations where we need to take things carefully because you don't want to put people back in a house and more slip comes down because there's some quite big rocks."
He said the big question is whether they can remove the amount of debris at the back of the houses.
"At the moment rubble is filling their backyards and stopping any access to the rear of the houses."
MacLean said council welfare staff were in daily contact with the seven displaced occupants of the two houses.
"We are keeping in very close touch with them."
The city council is currently housing three people in temporary accommodation and four others are staying with friends.
He said there is currently no timeline in place for when the houses may get an all-clear.
"We are talking many truckloads of rubble so whatever happens it is going to be a big project to try and make these houses safe again."
The storm that hit the capital brought surface flooding, road closures and the cancellations of flights over the weekend.
A lane was also closed on State highway 1 due to a burst wastewater main between the Aotea turnoff and Plimmerton.
The piece of infrastructure caused sewage to overflow onto Station Rd, Paremata Cres and some areas near the entrance of Paremata Primary School grounds.
The pipe was fixed on Monday but remains in a fragile condition.
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