Children among several missing after landslide hits New Zealand campground amid record rain
The landslide hit a campsite at Mount Maunganui following the area's wettest day on record, with about two and a half months' worth of rain falling in just 12 hours.
Search and rescue teams were working on Thursday to locate several people, including children, reported missing after a landslide struck a campground on New Zealand’s northern coast amid record rainfall.
The landslide hit a campsite at Mount Maunganui, flattening tents and sweeping a campervan into nearby hot pools. Witnesses told the New Zealand Herald they heard people screaming for help from inside a toilet block following the slide, but rescuers were unable to find them and the voices fell silent after about 15 minutes.
The Tauranga area and the surrounding Western Bay of Plenty District, where Mount Maunganui is located, recorded their wettest day on record, with about two and a half months’ worth of rain falling in just 12 hours. Thousands of people also lost power, most of them along the North Island’s east coast.
In a separate incident nearby, two people remain missing after a slip struck a house in Papamoa. Authorities are also searching for a man north of Auckland who went missing on Wednesday after being swept away by floodwaters while trying to cross a river.
“Police, alongside Fire and Emergency New Zealand, are working to locate and rescue people trapped in a landslide that came down off Mount Maunganui at 9.30 am (2030 GMT) today,” Bay of Plenty District Commander Superintendent Tim Anderson said, according to Radio New Zealand. He urged the public to stay away from the campsite and surrounding roads while operations continue and said efforts were also ongoing to find the two missing people in Papamoa.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said extreme weather continued to create dangerous conditions across the North Island.
“Right now, the government is doing everything we can to support those impacted,” Luxon wrote on the US-based social media platform X. He said authorities were closely monitoring developments nationwide, including the major incident at Mount Maunganui, where Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell was on the ground.