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Jon Sargeson was a writer. He had published several novels and a biography of a notable New Zealander, Sir James Wattie. He had purchased the first of the houses on the Huatere Valley Housing Project, a two bedroom house with an iron roof. On his visits to see the building of his new house, Jon had been happy with the quality of materials and the workmanship of the carpenters. Now in the storm he felt secure, being above the flooding valley floor, in a new house that felt solid and secure.
Jon had read widely. He knew of the need to pin the foundations to bedrock where there was a slippery clay overload, and he knew that the ring and slab foundation would hold the house together in an earthquake. In the spare bedroom that he had converted to his study he worked through the day, unaffected by the fierce storm that blew around him. As the day grew dark, late on Saturday, a Civil Emergency was declared. The Civil Defence forces were led by police and rescue services and comprised volunteers from organised clubs like the rugby and pony clubs. Among the helpers were Charlotte’s parents, Tom and Alice Hoar, riding their horses where vehicles could not go.
School halls became evacuation centres staffed by volunteering teachers. The hospital prepared for casualties by recalling doctors and nurses who were on leave. However, staffing was tight because many health officers had already left for the Labour Weekend holiday. St John’s Ambulance and Red Cross volunteers supplemented the staffing, especially for caring for those with mild hypothermia or needing bed rest. The elderly were evacuated by road and over water to safer areas further inland. The Polytechnic was used as a control centre to co-ordinate the many aspects of the Civil Defence operation.
Where the roads could not be found under the sheets of water, police used Rigid Inflatable Boats to rescue people in need, relying on the Wahanui boat and fishing clubs for materiel and personnel. There was already a network in place in the rural community, which had always been proud of its ability to look after itself. This community had to rescue not only vulnerable people but also animals caught in the flooding. The Agricultural and Pastoral Association made its pens and corrals available to house rescued animals. Small animals and pets would be cared for by the RSPCA and local veterinary surgeries. Wahanui stood strong, ready to fight the elements come what may.
Morning came late under the dark mantle of black clouds that continued to pour water down on to the land. More people were affected by the spreading failure of the electric power supply. They settled down with candles and storm lanterns. Many wisely turned off their mobile phones because they realised that once the battery went flat, the phone could not readily be charged until power had been restored.
Jon Sargeson’s house was the lowest on the new subdivision. It sat above and further up on the left of the hillside from the Huatere Shopping Mall, which was on the flat area at the toe of the ridge.
Jon felt a tremor running up his chair. At first he thought it was an earthquake but an earthquake unlike any other he had known. As he stood up to stretch he felt a distinct lurch. At first he thought it was him, needing to take a break or his vivid imagination in which he saw the whole house sliding downhill. The sensation was of a slow rolling earthquake slipping and sliding over itself like a wave in a sea made of mud. When Jon looked out of the window to view what was happening he saw the house on the opposite hillside moving up the valley. For a moment Jon was disoriented, as sometimes happens when one train travelling on parallel rails moves and the other stays still. Then he realised that the house across the valley was not moving up, his house was moving down.
Jon thought of those in houses beyond his, the young family two houses up, the old lady next door, the teenaged kids at home alone while Mum and Dad worked in the town itself. He threw on a rainproof parka and grabbed his largest torch. Running out of the house he was nearly blown off his feet as ferocious wind and horizontal rain hammered him, rattling on his parka with such force that he could not hear any other sound, hurting his face with the blows of the heavy rain drops.
Jon banged on the door of the elderly lady. There was no response. The ground shook under his feet as he ran to the house next door. His banging was answered by a frightened young woman holding a baby in her arms. She shielded the baby from the wind and the rain.
“Mr Sargeson, help me please,” she cried. “I'm frightened. Max hasn't come home and I'm alone with the kids.”
“You've got to get out,” said Jon. “My house is starting to slip.”
Amy Kotua knew Jon as a near neighbour. She knew he was telling the truth and had herself felt her house move just a little.
“Mrs Dawson. Next door. She's away,” she said. “I think the Ferguson's are in town but they have a son, Mark.”
“You get your kids ready, I'll get Mark and come back for you,” said Jon.
He ran next door. He could see the blue light from the television through the glass in the door. Mark quickly answered his hammering knock.
“We've got to get out,” said Jon. “Warm clothes, go over and help Mrs Kotua with the kids. I'll be back.”
Mark had been worried by the constant rain. His parents should have been home by now, but then perhaps they were helping evacuate elderly people from vulnerable houses and rest homes. That was the sort of thing the Fergusons did: he was a psychotherapist and she was a Department of Conservation guide.
“Can you drive?” asked Jon.
“Yes, but I've only got a Provisional,” said Mark, referring to the year's probation young drivers needed before qualifying for a full driving licence.
“Mrs Kotua can't drive but her husband Max took the Peugeot and left the four wheel drive. Get them all in the four wheel drive and follow me up the street,” said Jon. He now had a plan. The new road ran along the hillside, climbing as it went and coming out just below the ridge line where there was a lookout over the sea. From there Observatory Road led down the ridge to Cadiz, which the locals pronounced ‘kay-deez’, with very expensive houses on the seaward side. The slippery back clay was left behind.
Jon zigzagged his car across the road knocking on doors, and Mark with the Kotua family in the large Nissan tooted the car horn constantly. People came out of their houses thinking the police had come with a message. Behind the two cars and the walkers were two riders on horses, Tom and Alice Hoar, bringing up the rear to ensure everybody kept together.
Mark told people to walk immediately beside the two cars to the lookout, but to take nothing with them because speed was of the essence if they were to escape before the soggy ground slipped down the hill. It turned out to be not quite that simple. The end of the road had not been formed. It simply ended in a rough cul-de-sac. From the ten houses Jon had collected fifteen adults and five children. The children were crammed into the two vehicles while the adults walked beside the cars, trying their best to escape the ferocious wind.
Jon thought of Mark as an adult. He was certainly acting like one, assuming a leadership role that calmed others. He was pleased to have the assistance of Tom and Alice. Their presence was very reassuring to the residents and made Jon’s task easier.
It took some time, with the adults hunched over like Scott’s men in the Antarctic, battling the wind and rain, but finally, with tyres spinning more and more as the ground turned to jelly they reached the end of the formed road. The cars could go no further. The evacuees assembled in the lee of the cars while Tom rode ahead to find a way to the top.
As they stood in the howling wind and driving rain the ground took on a different vibration. There was a rumbling and shaking below them, where they had just come from, and a large whooshing noise, accompanied by crashing and cracking as the houses they had just left slipped away. One moment they were there, and the next they had slipped away like the upraised arm of a drowning man.
Then there was silence.
As if on cue, people began cheering and clapping and slapping Jon and Mark on the back, as they realised that any later, or any delay to pick up precious possessions, and they would have been doomed.
Tom returned and waved his arm for the group to follow in his track. The adults got the children out of the two vehicles. In the driving rain and wind that threatened to blow them over they now faced a steep and muddy climb to the lookout. The cars were moving sideways slowly down the hill as the muddy ooze was pulled by the laws of gravity to join the mess below.
Tom Hoar took the lead on his horse, followed by Mark and then Jon who shepherded the people in single file, an adult, a child then an adult, the fifty or so metres up a track leading to the lookout on the top of the ridge. Alice Hoar brought up the rear. They reached the top of the ridge and began the walk down to the houses at Cadiz.
They were noticed by a journalist who took a photograph of the long line of evacuees led by a man on a horse with another rider at the rear. When communications were restored, the pictures made headlines across the world: ‘Horse Sense’, Back to Basics’, ‘Saved by Old Tech’. There were photos of Tom and Alice, the close-ups of which Alice was not proud because they both looked old and tired.
“Which I guess we are,” she said,” but I really don’t want the whole world knowing.”
Radio New Zealand later interviewed them regarding their experience in which they gave a brief matter-of-fact description of realising the floods were too severe for vehicles to get to some places so they took two horses in the float and went to help wherever needed, after first checking that their adult daughter was safe as Frank her partner was in Australia and Charlotte was alone in the house.
The shopping mall at the foot of the valley was very busy as people bought candles and bottled water and food supplies while the roads were still passable. Throngs of people smiled and joked while they waited at the checkout counters. They did not see and did not hear the wall of mud and water and debris rushing towards them. They had no warning before the walls of the mall collapsed and the roof fell in.
“It started with a kind of drumming noise,” said a woman who survived. The camera facing her zoomed in for an ultra-close up.
“How did you feel?” asked the young reporter.
“”I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know what it was. Sort of like before a tsunami I s’pose,” the bedraggled female survivor said. “I saw the wall, the outside wall I think it must have been, moving at the bottom, and water seeped in. I ran to a counter and climbed on to it.”
“Did you realise what was about to happen?” asked the reporter.
“No way!” replied the woman. “I just did what I did. Next thing, I thought it was a truck crashing into the wall. The concrete wall fell down and this huge, I thought it was a ship, wall of brown came towards me like brown melted plastic. I felt the counter move under my feet as the muddy water moved quite quietly across the space. It wasn’t very deep, just below the counter top I was standing on and then the crashing began as the wall on one side of the gap fell over, and the next one did and the next and then the lights went out.”
“How long did that last?” asked the reporter.
The woman seemed to be lost in the story, continuing as if she hadn’t heard the question. “Emergency lights came on and I could see the mud taking people’s legs from under them. Even though it moved slowly the force of the mud stuff was huge. I saw a really strong man go under holding his wife’s hand. They didn’t get up. They just sort of disappeared into the mud.”
“”How horrible,” said the reporter. “How did you feel?”
The woman stared into space. Ignoring the question she said, “The noise in the roof got louder, a drumming-booming noise and then there was a crack and a huge crash and it all fell down. I was next to a pole holding the roof up and sheets of iron sort fell down over me, held up by the upright so I wasn’t hit by anything.” The woman paused. “Then I saw I could get out of there through the fallen wall. I joined arms with three other people, like crossing a river, and we got out.”
“That was lucky,” said the reporter. “How did you feel when you escaped and so many died?”
The young woman turned away so the camera could not see her tears.
“And now we leave Melanie Bright to talk to the Mayor. Mr Cameron, how do you feel?”
“How do you expect me to bloody well feel?” he replied, pushing past her to get to a small group of elderly people huddled together like sheep in a storm.
“Well, it seems that the Mayor is too busy to talk to us right now,” said the reporter. “Let’s ask that policeman.”