Landslide

This is the second post that never was that I mentioned the other day. To be honest, this isn't really my story, it didn't really do much more than inconvenience me. At some time in mid June, around the 20th maybe, my husband had a call out with the fire brigade, as there was a landslide up the road, where one road had slipped down onto the road before.  Other than getting the call out, it didn't really have much impact on us, other than putting a couple of roads that we use regularly out of action.  The next day, he went and took some photos of the damage.

As you can see from the pictures, the top road had slipped down the side of the hill in the landslide and fallen onto the road below.  There was a house that was almost, but not quite in the path of the landslide, and although fortunately no one was hurt, the residents were trapped in their property when the driveway became blocked.

I didn't really think much more of it, other than that it would be a bit of a pain that we couldn't use either of the roads for the time being.  Certainly, it wasn't on my mind at all when a day or so later our telephone rang at four in the morning.  I dismissed in as a wrong number in my sleepy mind, then seconds later the firebrigade pager sounded and the phone rang again.  We had to evacuate and meet down at the local school as they feared that the slip was on the move again, and could come near our houses.  

I should perhaps point out here, that I lived in the UK for 30 years and was never once evacuated, and here we are after five years in New Zealand having been evacuated twice.  I bundled all four children into the car, still in their night wear, and we drove down to the school.  We arrived down there to find only one other car waiting, they had been there a little while themselves and were beginning to worry that it was some elaborate scheme to get them out of the house.  As the school was all closed up, the decision was made to move down to the firestation, which is where we headed.

We stayed a little while before heading into town for breakfast, at the only place open at that time, McDonalds.  It was here that we got a call asking if we minded being on the local news, which you can watch here.

As it turned out, we were able to return home later that day, the landslide hadn't really come near our house, so as I say, we were just inconvenienced for a while there.  Still it was something interesting for the kids to tell people at school.