At least two people have died, and more are missing after landslides swamped a house and tore through a holiday campground on the east coast of New Zealand on Thursday morning.
Search efforts continued through the night at the Beachside Holiday Park in Mount Maunganui, Tauranga, where a landslide crashed down on campervans, tents, and an amenities block.
Rescue teams at the campsite said they initially heard voices calling for help from beneath the rubble but had detected no further signs of life by late afternoon. The number of people missing was in the "single figures" and included children, local media reported.
A separate landslide hit a home in the region’s Welcome Bay hours beforehand. Two people escaped the house, but the bodies of two others who were trapped inside were recovered hours later.
The landslide comes after days of torrential rain linked to a tropical weather system, which has dumped extraordinary volumes of rain across large parts of the North Island.
New Zealand’s emergency management minister, Mark Mitchell, said parts of the east coast resembled “a war zone”, with helicopters deployed to rescue families trapped on rooftops and local states of emergency declared across several regions.
“It’s a fluid and sensitive issue at the moment,” Mr Mitchell told Radio New Zealand. “Everyone is working as hard as they can to get the best possible resolution, but it is a very difficult and challenging situation.”
Fire and Emergency New Zealand said around 40 firefighters, including urban search and rescue teams and sniffer dogs, were working at the site, which has been fully evacuated. Two excavators have also been deployed to help remove debris.
Fire and Emergency commander William Pike said first responders had heard voices when they arrived shortly after the slip but were later forced to pull back because of the risk of further movement.
“Initially, when the first arriving crews arrived, there were some signs of life,” he told local media. “But we withdrew our people to make sure the slip didn’t move any further.”
Police said the number of people unaccounted for was believed to be in the “single figures”, though the exact number remained unclear as some campers had checked out without notifying authorities.
Witnesses described scenes of chaos as the hillside collapsed. Sonny Worrall, an Australian tourist who was swimming in nearby hot pools, told local media he narrowly avoided being hit by a caravan.
“I heard rolling thunder and cracking trees,” he said. “The whole hillside gave way. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Mount Maunganui is one of the most important landmarks in the Bay of Plenty region. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit it every month and it is popular with both international visitors and holidaying Kiwis.
The landslide-struck campsite sits at the base of Mount Maunganui, also known as Mauao, an extinct volcano that’s both a popular tourist destination and sacred Māori site.
Surrounded by white sand beaches and with its main beach heralded as the best in New Zealand, Mount Maunganui also attracts tourists for its hot salt pools, which are described by the local tourist board as having healing properties.
Authorities said the Bay of Plenty region recorded its wettest day on record, with the nearby city of Tauranga receiving about 295mm of rain in just over 30 hours – roughly two and a half months’ worth of rainfall.
Local states of emergency have been declared in Northland, Coromandel Peninsula, Tairawhiti, Hauraki and parts of the Bay of Plenty, with residents urged to evacuate low-lying areas and avoid all non-essential travel.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand said it had responded to more than 230 weather-related callouts since Tuesday, including rescues from rooftops and flooded homes. In the east coast settlement of Punaruku, firefighters described houses buried in mud, logging debris and floodwater.
At least 8,000 households remained without power on Thursday, down from 16,000 earlier, while dozens of roads were closed because of flooding and landslides.
Elsewhere on the North Island, police were continuing to search for a 47-year-old man who was swept away with his vehicle while attempting to cross a river near Warkworth on Wednesday. His wife told Radio New Zealand she was holding out hope that he had survived.
"I know his personality is strong, wise," she said, adding that he was a fisherman back home in Kiribati and knew how to swim and dive.
In Papamoa, south of Mount Maunganui, two people were reported missing and one person seriously injured after a separate landslide struck a home early on Thursday.
Communities across the island have also reported dramatic rescues, including neighbours pulling a 94-year-old man from floodwaters in Coromandel and a woman rescued by kayak as fast-flowing water rose to neck height around her home.
New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency warned that further heavy rain was expected through Thursday, falling on already saturated ground and increasing the risk of additional landslides, flooding and dangerous river conditions.
Scientists say the pattern of increasingly intense rainfall is consistent with what is expected in a warming climate.
“It seems that these days, every storm brings with it orange or red flood warnings and devastation and misery somewhere in the country,” said James Renwick, professor of climate science at Victoria University of Wellington. “Sadly, this is exactly what we expect with a warmer climate that has more moisture in the air.”
Prime minister Christopher Luxon said the government was doing everything possible to support affected communities and praised emergency crews for their efforts.
“All those who are putting themselves in harm’s way to keep Kiwis safe, the whole country is grateful,” he said.
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