Mum whose toddler was swept away in raging floodwaters shares harrowing survival story

Friday, 17 February 2023

Two-year-old Ivy Collins was swept away after floodwater lifted her off her mother’s shoulders.

Ella Collins speaks in a strong clear voice until she comes to the moment that she replays again and again in her mind.

“The water just came up behind me … and it just lifted Ivy off my shoulders and I went under the water. When I came up I could just see her floating away.”

It’s a story of tragedy but also one of miraculous survival after the Collins family fought for their lives as a violent torrent threatened to drown them all.

That Monday evening had started calmly, with Ella and Jack Collins’ daughters, Ivy, 2 and Imogen, 4, safely tucked up in bed in their home near Eskview, Hawke’s Bay, as the rain pelted down outside.

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Ella Collins has told of her families' remarkable survival after they lost their daughter Ivy in flood waters.

The couple went to bed, but Ella Collins woke to the sound of rushing water at 4am.

She initially thought a tap had been left running, but remembered there was a storm forecast, so got up to check the roof in case there was a leak.

But to her surprise, she stepped into ankle-high cold water.

“And I could just hear this really loud water rushing.”

Outside the bedroom she saw the cat door was open and gushing like a faucet.

Panicking, she began moving possessions up high to stop them getting ruined, not thinking the water would get any higher after previously suffering a small amount of carpet damage in a minor flood.

She checked on their two girls who were still fast asleep and continued to move things around, until her husband realised the water was rising at an alarming rate.

Jack Collins told his wife they needed to get out of the house and had the forethought to put his wetsuit on, while she put some essentials into a bag.

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“We made the decision to leave the girls asleep right up until we left, so they weren’t panicking.”

By then the couple’s two staffy dogs were swimming in the water outside, so her husband brought them in and put them on the kitchen counter before he ventured outside to check on the conditions.

In the darkness, amid the rain and the rising water, Jack Collins made out a boat with a neighbour in it. The man told him he needed to get out now, but he said he had to go back for his wife and children.

“Hurry up,” the man yelled back.

Ella Collins said within 30 minutes the water rose a metre. The couple moved quickly to get the children out.

Her next memory is particularly painful.

“Jack went up to the kids and said ‘come on babies, we’ve got to go on an adventure’,” she said through tears.

Her husband put Imogen on his shoulders, while she put Ivy on hers.

By the time they left the front door, the water was up to her chest. The plan was to make their way to a neighbour’s two-storey house, two doors down from them.

They managed to make it safely across the front of a neighbour’s property before they came to a hedge. To get around it, they had to go deeper into the water and cross a driveway.

But halfway across, they heard something “break” and a “massive torrent” of water smashed into them as they tried to steady their girls on their shoulders.

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In desperation, her husband doubled back to the hedge they had just come from and lifted Imogen onto it, but Collins couldn’t follow.

She felt the water hit her from behind, and felt Ivy being lifted from her shoulders. The next thing she remembers is being underwater. When she surfaced she saw Ivy floating away from her.

“I lost her,” she said.

In desperation her husband dove into the water, but the current was too swift, and he had to cling on to a tree.

All she could hear was screaming, but the noise of the raging water muffled her husband’s words.

Knowing she had to get to Imogen, she climbed onto a concrete fence.

“I didn’t know what the f… was going to happen to Jack. I just knew I had to stay with Imogen.”

She managed to get through the hedge to a distraught Imogen, who was covered in scratches from the branches.

She took her back to the house they had previously passed and findingthe front door unlocked, went inside, with the water now at her shoulders.

She put Imogen on a floating couch and removed her daughter’s wet clothes as she was freezing.

Meanwhile, her husband had allowed the current to push him into the back fence then used it to guide himself past the garage and inside.

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He immediately told his wife to get into the roof cavity. On learning their two elderly neighbours were outside on a bench seat on top of a table, he called out to them to get directions to the manhole.

Luckily, the house was being renovated and there were no doors on any cupboards. Seeing dry sheets and towels in a high cupboard, Jack grabbed them and stuffed them up into the manhole.

Ella Collins then floated Imogen on a chair down the hallway before helping her get into the roof.

The couple stripped off in the cavity, and all three tried to get warm under sheets and Pink Batts.

“It was very, very cold and we just kind of hunkered down.”

Her husband lay on his back and kicked the roof to make a hole but found it was impenetrable.

Soon he was urging them to move again, as the water continued to rise. He took Imogen on his shoulders, and dipped under the water at every doorway to get her through.

Still trying to get to the two-storey house, he left Imogen with his wife and got himself across the drive where they had lost Ivy.

He begged a neighbour in the two-storey house to fling a guideline to them, and told him his daughter was dead and they and the two elderly neighbours would all die if they didn’t get help.

But the neighbour said he was not in a better position himself and couldn’t help, so Jack turned back.

By then the water was lapping at the guttering and the intensity was ever-increasing.

Getting back into the roof was the only option, but they had to do it from the outside and would have to make a hole.

By now the elderly neighbour was on the roof, while his wife was on the bench on a table beside him.

The roof was slippery, so Jack scaled a Frangipani tree to get a tie used to prop it up after a storm, in the hope of using it to pull his wife, Imogen and the woman onto the roof.

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“He was running out of energy at that point.”

With nothing on the roof strong enough to secure the tie down, Jack broke the aerial and used it to pry away iron in the spot he had been kicking at earlier.

Managing to get a corner of iron to lift, Jack used his bare hands and began ripping at sheets of corrugated iron as “if it were sheets of newspaper,” cutting himself in the process.

Eventually with the help of the tie, they and the elderly couple got inside the cavity and waited it out.

After three emergency phonecalls before communications died, and a plea for emergency services to rescue them, the group stayed huddled in the roof from 5.30am on Tuesday morning until the afternoon, when a helicopter rescued them.

During that time, Imogen remained calm and didn’t cry – making her parents proud of her resilience.

The following morning Search and Rescue workers advised the family they had found Ivy two doors down from their property.

Since then Ella has shared how everyone who met Ivy was astounded by her ability to communicate well beyond her years and her deep empathy and compassion.

“She had a great sense of humour, was very creative and determined to overcome obstacles.”

Ivy “charged through life with a beautiful smile on her face regardless of what stood in her way”, Ella said, and did everything with her mum and big sister while dad worked.

“We were not wealthy at all, but we lived such rich and love-filled days.”

Ivy and Imogen were everything to her and her husband and her loss would deeply affect them and many others forever, she said.

“Right now it seems an insurmountable mountain, but we have each other; my husband Jack, our daughter Imogen, our baby due in August and our families, friends and community. We all have each other.”

But amid their grief, there is thankfulness that they survived against the odds – something Ella puts down to Jack, who she says is a hero.

“He saved all of us.”