A couple displaced following a landslip close to their rental home are living day-to-day and fear they will have to leave the island.
Karen Ann Shmid and her partner had to make a hasty exit after Friday’s deluge of rain caused a substantial slip by their house on Hekerua Road which has since been closed.
They are going back and forth to check on their cats and are desperate for authorities to give them guidance on whether it’s safe to return.
“I thought I heard a palm frond coming off the trees, then it came again, and again,” Karen told Gulf News. “My partner went outside to look and said, ‘Something’s really wrong here’. You could see that the whole hillside had come down, the brush and the trees and everything that had been on the land. It came up to our walkway basically.”
Dealing with the prediction of hard rain for the next five days, they both agreed:‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here’.
The local community have since gathered to help sandbag and clear out drains, which is heartening, but Karen says she had appealed to council in the past to prevent this very thing happening. • Liza Hamilton
Full story in this week’s Gulf News…Out Now!!!
