Landslide Strikes Campground in New Zealand, Several People Missing

(MENAFN) Rescue crews scrambled Thursday to find multiple individuals, including children, who vanished after a devastating landslide engulfed a coastal campground in New Zealand during unprecedented rainfall that shattered regional weather records.

The mudslide slammed into a campsite at Mount Maunganui, crushing tents and propelling a campervan into adjacent geothermal hot pools. Eyewitnesses 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 region and neighboring Western Bay of Plenty District, where Mount Maunganui sits, experienced their soggiest day in recorded history, with approximately two and a half months' worth of precipitation dumping down in merely 12 hours. Electrical outages affected thousands of residents, predominantly along the North Island's eastern shoreline.

In a concurrent tragedy close by, two individuals remain unaccounted for after a landslip struck a residence in Papamoa. Authorities are also searching for a man north of Auckland who went missing 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 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 warned that 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.

Meteorologists attributed the deluge to a slow-moving atmospheric river that stalled over the region, unleashing torrential downpours that overwhelmed drainage systems and destabilized hillsides. Civil defense officials have issued warnings for continued dangerous conditions, with forecasters predicting additional heavy rainfall through the weekend across vulnerable areas of the North Island.

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