Living in the shadow of disaster

MIKE WATSON/ The Dominion Post

PLACE IN THE SUN: Retired IT consultant John Mariu, left, is back at his Waihi Village home after being evacuated earlier in the week.

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Waihi Village has been pummelled by sliding land over the past 160 years, writes Mike Watson.

For several days Waihi Village sat deserted, in an erie silence. Now 50 residents have returned to their houses in the village at the southern end of Lake Taupo, relieved to be back and determined that the threat of landslips will not drive them away.

John Mariu, who has lived there for five years, said it had been the first time residents, many of them elderly, had had to move from their homes because of the risk of landslides on the Hipaua thermal cliffs above the village.

Mr Mariu said people would keep living in the village in spite of the constant risk a risk that has seen the area pummelled by sliding land over at least the past 160 years.

"It has far too much history and tradition for it to be abandoned," the retired IT consultant said. Waihi Village is the ancestral base of Ngati Tuwharetoa.

Civil Defence and Taupo District Council asked residents to leave on Monday after a series of earthquakes increased the threat of a landslide. The state of emergency was lifted on Thursday night, after two teams of scientists had investigated the hillside and found no imminent danger existed.

Resident Marie Otimi had enough on her hands when the quakes struck 1200 people due to come over for tea today to celebrate a Treaty signing.

Two earthquakes of plus-four magnitude hit the picturesque village last Saturday and the house started rocking and rolling. "It was one heck of a jolt. It woke me up," the 65-year-old said.

Mrs Otimi and 49 other residents were bundled up and billeted out to motels and marae. And the dignitaries who were to have arrived today for the official handing over of the Central North Island forests to iwi were instead sent to Turangi.

Mrs Otimi is happy to be home. The constant risk of landslips from the "steaming hills" above the village does not faze the great-grandmother.

"I've lived with it all my life."

So too have many others who call the ancestral base their home. They accept they live in a hazardous area like Wellingtonians understand a fault line runs under their houses.

It has been 99 years since the last major slip caused loss of life at Waihi. There was a loud crack on a stormy June night in 1910. Within three minutes, 2.8 million cubic metres of material rumbled down, killing one man, Wi Tamaiwhana.

Sixty four years earlier, in May 1846, a more deadly landslide overwhelmed the village of Te Rapa, killing 60 people, including Ngati Tuwharetoa chief Te Heuheu Tukino II.

But the path of the next landslide is unknown.

Experts believe it could flow directly down the path of previous landslides and miss the village. Or it could hit a hard rock spur and be redirected towards the settlement.

So now the question is being asked again: Is it safe for Waihi Village residents to live in close proximity to a potentially fatal hazard zone?

Locals, Civil Defence and geologists have always known it is not a case of if, but when, the next big one happens.

A Taupo District Council report in 1999 predicted a 65 per cent chance of a landslide at the Hipaua thermal area within 50 years. The report said the landslide would trigger a five-metre wave on Lake Taupo.

Another report, by Tonkin and Taylor in 1998, estimated the ground was moving at seven centimetres a year concluding the area was "an accident waiting to happen".

Today an estimated 1.4 million cubic metres of soft, oozing clay and rock sit precariously on hot ground, steaming quietly above the village.

Civil Defence co-ordinator Shamus Howard said it would not be safe for residents until all the material had slipped down.

In the meantime, Waihi Village's residents are just happy to be home.

- © Fairfax NZ News