Bodies recovered from Pāpāmoa landslip home as desperate search for survivors at Mount Maunganui continued through the night
Friday, 23 January 2026
Emergency crews worked through the night in challenging conditions to try to find people missing under a landslide that hit a campground in Mount Maunganui.
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell told RNZ this morning it remained a rescue operation.
He said he had not received any updates about whether there had been any signs of life, saying there were lots of damaged and crushed buildings, caravans and campervans which made it a a difficult and challenging environment.
This morning Prime Minister Christoper Luxon will be flying to weather-affected regions.
Overnight desperate families could only wait and hope as rescuers searched for people, including children, missing after the torrential rain and devastating landslides in the upper North Island.
In Tauranga, rescuers were digging in search of survivors after part of the Mt Maunganui hillside collapsed on a camping ground, and last night police confirmed the bodies of two people - missing since an overnight landslip on Welcome Bay Rd in Pāpāmoa - had been recovered.
At Warkworth north of Auckland, a motorist swept away by a swollen river on Wednesday remains missing.
Yesterday afternoon emergency services brought in dog teams and heavy equipment to search the Mt Maunganui slip, after members of the public digging earlier in the day heard cries for help which later fell silent.
The slip buried camp sites and upturned a campervan into the camp ground’s hot pools complex.
At least six people including several children were believed to be unaccounted for, some trapped in an amenities block or in vehicles.
Authorities said yesterday afternoon parents and a husband were among family members of those missing at the Mt Maunganui camp ground.
They confirmed the number of people unaccounted for was in single figures.
Some of the unaccounted might be people who left Mount Holiday Park but didn’t officially check out, as the site has been evacuated, Tauranga mayor Mahé Drysdale said.
Fire and Emergency commander William Pike said rescuers were trying to “de-layer” the rubble.
Auckland resident Bruce Moore was among the eyewitnesses, and said he was entering the hot pools adjacent to the campsite when he heard “a hell of a noise” as trees were uprooted and the earth gave way.
“I saw the land just come down with a mighty crash,” he said.
The next sounds were screams.
On Welcome Bay Rd, two people escaped, one with serious injuries, after a slip hit their home. The bodies of the remaining two occupants were found on Thursday night.
Last night, Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) said their specialist Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team, alongside Police, were still searching at both the Mt Maunganui and Papamoa sites.
No-one had been found at Mt Maunganui as of 9pm on Thursday.
Fenz deputy national commander Megan Stiffler said USAR is “trained to operate in unstable ground, structural collapse and complex rescue environments.”
“USAR is currently carefully removing layers of debris and heavy machinery is on site to assist,” she said.
'This is a complex and high-risk environment, and our teams are working to achieve the best possible outcome while keeping everyone safe. The teams will be operating overnight until the search is complete.“
Reporters on the ground at the Mount described the feeling in the area as “eerily serene” with some people unaware of the unfolding tragedy.
At Warkworth north of Auckland, police were yesterday winding down the search for the motorist swept away. Media reported he had moved to New Zealand from Vanuatu with his wife and family.
Record rainfalls in the north and east of the North Island left many areas cut off orwithout power.
In Te Araroa on the East Coast, police say helicopters are being deployed to help people trapped on roofs due to flooding.
States of emergency remained in place yesterday in Whangārei, Thames Coromandel and Hauraki Districts and for Bay of Plenty and Tairāwhiti.
Climate scientist Professor James Renwick said the entire storm has a “climate change signature” and that without the gradual and worsening warming of the planet, this week’s rainfall might have been significantly less intense.
Renwick said the storm was well forecasted – which direction it was coming from, when it would land and how much rain it would bring – and though it didn’t quite reach tropical cyclone level, it got close.
Without offering hard numbers, he suggested if climate change was not a factor, the same storm could have been 15-20% less intense. The heaviest rains that reached up to 30mm of rain in an hour could have been 30-40% less intense.
“It would have still been miserable, but not as extreme as we’ve seen. That landslide at Mount Maunganui maybe wouldn’t have happened, who knows,” Renwick said.
“It’s probably harder than doing the weather,” he said of predicting landslips.
“There are so many antecedent factors – how wet was the soil, what is growing there, as well as the rainfall.
“Part of the issue I am guessing, is that we already had very heavy rain in the region last week so the ground would have been primed to slide – an extra dose of rain in the last 24 hours wouldn’t have help.
“As the climate changes, we make these extreme events more extreme and more difficult to deal with.”
He wants a nationally coordinated, government-led approach to climate change so that regional authorities are not left to grapple with the varied impacts of climate change alone.