Slip house filled with mud

Tom Fitness, 4, contemplates the damage to his grandparents' house from the centre of the lounge. Picture / Mark Mitchell

A family are moving house earlier than expected, thanks to the weather.

Nettie Fitness, 67, and her husband, Reg, had their home of 30 years on the market when a massive landslip on Tuesday night sent mud and debris flooding through it.

Mrs Fitness said the house had been on the market for two months, and she and her husband were looking to move from Eastbourne to Lower Hutt.

"My daughter offered me $5 for it, so if anyone can go above that they could be in with a shot," she said.

"There's mud everywhere and it goes right up to your knees. They had to knock a hole in the wall for us to get into the main bedroom, which is covered in trees, glass, slush and smashed furniture."

Mrs Fitness said rain had caused incidents in the past, but never bad enough to evacuate their home. She was unsure what would happen to the house, which is now being examined by insurance assessors and the Hutt City Council.

"But it doesn't matter because we are definitely not going back there. It's time for us to move on," she said.

Mrs Fitness said if the family had stayed "a minute longer" on Tuesday night they "would definitely not be here today".

"We heard this noise, which was like glass smashing and they just said 'go now' and we left with what we were wearing and nothing else.

"That sound was tree stumps, mud, logs, you name it, crashing through the main bedroom and we would have definitely have been killed if we were asleep in there.

"All of the furniture in there was snapped like matchsticks."

Mrs Fitness and her husband spent the night at her sister-in-law's home in Eastbourne. At least 12 other people had to be billeted because their homes were also under threat.

The Fitnesses returned to her home yesterday to salvage what they could from the house.