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Roger Rabbits with |
It was one of those scary weather events – 244mm of rain dumped in just 24 hours. Nothing like it before, they said, not since records began more than 100 years ago.
Twenty-four hours later the sun peeped out and the red rainfall was warning lifted. But about 9.30am on January 22 part of a sodden hillside yielded – it was on the move, groaning, rumbling, sliding, and consuming the back of the Mount camping ground. Six people dead. Hunter Wells watched and listened from the sidelines that catastrophic day. These are his observations, impressions and encounters.
Story:
It was a cop car, wailing in the distance, on Chapel St. Not the typically urgent, excited, get-out-of-the-way wail I usually see and hear from my deck – cops, ambos, fire brigade, all day every day, screaming across the causeway.
I always wonder, ‘What’s in store for those poor buggers when they get to where they’re needed?’
But this wail was a different. A long, slow, mournful wail. So it seemed. And it was taking yonks to come within eyeshot.
I waited and watched.
Then it eased into view – a new Škoda cop car, lights flashing, siren ‘wee-wooing’ and crawling along at 25 km/hr. Crawling to an emergency? How does that work?
The answer followed a few metres behind. A huge digger on the back of a truck. When does a digger ever get a police escort? When we call the digger ‘Hope’ when tragedy comes home, home to our town. When lives depend on ‘Hope’. That’s when.
‘Do your damnedest’
The heart just about crashed through my rib cage at the sight. There was only one place that digger was headed at precisely 6.31pm January 22 – forever a dark day in this city now.
‘Hope’ the digger, like the cavalry, was headed into the breach, astride a 36-wheel semi charger, tracking a very deliberate path to Mauao to join what was, at that stage, still a rescue mission.
For some inexplicable reason I yelled encouragement from 150 metres. “Go digger, go beast. Do your damnedest!” Pathetic and trite in hindsight – but interesting how we react to a crisis. I finished my rant. “Go dig mate! Find! Bring those poor people home.”
The boom on the digger was cocked in a salute-like position. Was it saying, “aye, aye Sir”? My message was lost on the wind, but the spirit carried all the way to ground zero. Because 24 hours later that digger was still doing her “damnedest”. ‘Hope’ was keeping hope alive.
I drew some hope – because hope is easier than despair – from pictures I saw early Friday morning. An Ōmokoroa property had been evacuated overnight. And for some unfathomable reason a tide of mud and floodwater had chosen to deviate around the property. See! Good things happen when we have hope.
Hope then a miracle
And there’s always hope until there’s absolutely no hope. Don’t know why I am a believer because hope deserted me, betrayed me badly. Many years ago I cradled a beautiful newborn in the unshakeable belief and hope; that the best medical minds in an obstetrics unit were wrong with their gloomy prognosis. For six weeks I held out hope until there was no hope. So I waited for a miracle. Neither were delivered me.
More than 30 years on just the mention of his name makes me weep. But I also take joy, and pride, at the power of his memory. And it ignited again Friday as I thought of the profound desperation, agony, anguish, hurt, misery…yes, and implacable hope…the families and friends around the Mauao calamity endured as they awaited news. Any news. No amount of patience, presence and practical support would have helped. You don’t want understanding – you just want your child, husband, wife, friend home again. Safely! Now! So I know hope, and I understand and feel the hurt when hope abandons us.
And all the ‘whys’. Why us? Why here? Why now? Just why?
I am trying to visualise 9.31am that day – in a shower block, in a holiday park, in summer, in a most beautiful part of the world. They’d probably only just cleared the sleepy dust from their eyes. Cleaned their teeth. Brushed their hair. There might have been idle chatter and banter about the adventures ahead that day. A dunk in the surf, wallowing in the hot pools, scaling Mauao, a cheeky wander around the base track, playing dodgems with cruise line passengers on main street. Ice creams, a snooze, and do it all again.
‘I’m bawling’
But then a gathering roar. “A tsunami of dirt” was one description. The cries for help, followed by a hideously loud, tell-tale silence.
Like the palpable silence a friend encountered when she rang to check on a work colleague of 17 years who’d been staying at the camping ground. “I called again and again, but no answer.” Then the number was blocked. “So bloody horrible. I’m bawling my eyes out.”
It reminded me of the Erebus disaster. New Zealand is such a small place. We all knew someone who knew someone, or was related to someone on Flight 901.
Surely this is something that happens elsewhere, anywhere but here. Not so, I am reminded. Landslides remain New Zealand’s deadliest natural hazard. Think Cyclone Gabrielle – 800,000 landslides across 100 square kilometres. The evil Gabrielle was the most extreme landslide-triggering event ever recorded globally. So why would I think we’re immune.
A young ex-pat was headed to work in the London tube 7pm NZT on the fateful Friday when she received word of the Mount disaster. “Oh my God,”she cried loudly, startling a full, peak-hour, train carriage. Tears followed. She was haunted by a two-week holiday just months earlier when every day she, her partner and two-year-old toddler had scrambled around the Mount spotting fur seals, dunking in the surf and then warming in the hot pools. “Just perfect. I loved lying back in the steamy pools and gazing up on that face of the mountain. Absolutely perfect.”
But then the mountain turned on us. “This was such a horror to wake to,” she said. “Made me feel quite sick and sad all day.”
Embraced for all time
“Exactly my point,” said another outsider. “People who visit the Mount always take away special forever memories. Will it? Can it ever be the same again?”
Not for a long time at least. A Māori leader tells us we can no long physically engage with our mountain. We will have to rely on a gaze from afar, memories and photos. For now.
There was a famous quote from the fiercest of warriors, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey – he told mothers of Anzacs who died and are buried at Gallipoli, to wipe away their tears, because they rest peacefully and are now sons of Turkey too.
It echoed the sentiments of local Ngāti Ranginui iwi. “With this tragedy, those who have passed now become part of the sacred fabric of our Maunga…protected and embraced for all time.”
Mauao, a mountain, a taonga, a very spiritual place, and now a majestic, soaring, 232 metre monument.
Later last Thursday my friend’s overwhelming sadness was carry-on luggage when she took a flight to Sydney. It was sensed by the cabin crew and they tried to make her flight as bearable as possible. When disembarking she was slipped a hand-written note signed by all the cabin crew Sarah-Jane, Leon, Teresa, Ruby and Sophie. “Praying for good news for your friend XXX. Have an amazing time in Sydney. From all the crew QF148”. An “ooooh!” gesture. But again, the prayers and hopes didn’t come to anything.
