{"id":249422,"date":"2026-01-24T10:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T10:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/249422\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T10:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T10:44:09","slug":"helena-bay-hill-slip-leaves-popular-oakura-fish-and-chip-shop-in-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/249422\/","title":{"rendered":"Helena Bay Hill slip leaves popular \u014cakura fish and chip shop in limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday Couper urged people to stay off that access route<\/a> unless they are a fulltime resident.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe massive slip, including a boulder covering two-thirds of the road, is blocking Russell Rd at Helena Bay, Northland. Photo \/ Denise Piper<\/p>\n

\u014cakura fish and chip shop owners Bruce and Dana Williams fled their \u014cakura home in chest-height water early on Sunday .<\/p>\n

They are staying at the top of Helena Bay hill with their daughter Ella Williams.<\/p>\n

The new slip is blocking their return to their business and putting a question mark over the reopening of \u014cakura Skips Fish n Chips. <\/p>\n

Bruce Williams said he had been told it could take two months to repair the slip.<\/p>\n

The shop, famous for its hand-made doughnuts, has been shut since a weather bomb saw a summer\u2019s worth of rain hit<\/a> in a few hours on the coast northeast of Whang\u0101rei.<\/p>\n

\"SlipsSlips swamp \u014cakura settlement north-east of Whang\u0101rei after the weekend’s weather bomb <\/p>\n

Couper said it was a major concern the community had been cut off.<\/p>\n

Couper had lived through Cyclones Bola, Delilah and Gabrielle.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut \u014cakura and [the] surrounding area is as bad as we have ever seen. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s worse than Cyclone Gabrielle,\u201d Couper said.<\/p>\n

Terrifying escape through floodwaters<\/p>\n

Bruce and Dana Williams escaped their flooded \u014cakura rental property about 5.30am on Sunday, wading through chest-height floodwaters in darkness to get to their shop 200m down the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really terrifying. It was a vortex of chest-deep water pushing against us in the darkness. We nearly drowned,\u201d Bruce Williams said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019ve seen dramas before. I\u2019ve been at sea all my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dana Williams said the water was coming in the back door.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe grabbed what we could and got out as fast as we could,\u201d Dana said.<\/p>\n

The couple and their two adult sons and dog walked for 10 minutes to get to the shop on slightly higher ground.<\/p>\n

Their son then grabbed a boat and went around the flooded valley yelling at people to wake up and get out because of flooding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re exhausted,\u201d Bruce Williams said.<\/p>\n

The couple are today working with Northland Civil Defence to find emergency accommodation.<\/p>\n

They had been going backwards and forwards to \u014cakura through intermittent road access to clean up until now.<\/p>\n

Whang\u0101rei District Council Civil Defence staff were this morning looking at how to address the giant slip\u2019s impacts.<\/p>\n

Couper said heavy machinery would be needed to evaluate its size and other features.<\/p>\n

He said it would be a couple of days before that could happen.<\/p>\n

\" Dealing with the effects of the giant new Helena Bay hill slip was the focus of Thursday morning’s Whang\u0101rei Civil Defence emergency operations centre at Whang\u0101rei District Council.
\nPhoto \/ Susan Botting <\/p>\n

The Government would be approached for financial assistance towards repairs.<\/p>\n

Couper said it was too soon to put a dollar figure on the cost, but it would be significant.<\/p>\n

He said 16 people and nine pets had been evacuated from \u014cakura this week and were staying on marae and locally.<\/p>\n

He said there was no quick fix for when they might be able to return home.<\/p>\n

Couper said council roading contractors would be working on the slip while wastewater staff would head to \u014cakura once slip access was sorted.<\/p>\n

Building inspectors would follow, to check weather-affected properties.<\/p>\n

The area had taken a double hit, first on Sunday then on Wednesday and Thursday .<\/p>\n

Couper said his message to affected communities was to continue to pull together.<\/p>\n

\u201cLean on each other. Keep up the co-operation demonstrated so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Couper said civil defence and emergency services were working to make sure people received help as required.<\/p>\n

He said people could be helicoptered out to emergency medical help if needed.<\/p>\n

\u25a0 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday Couper urged people to stay off that access route unless they are a fulltime resident. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76467,145083,2851,95,1561,3028,6162,11586,5426,22857,8321,145084,71,13313,145081,31037,78,794,7973,80652,111,43,139,69,1523,9769,10903,801,1326,64572,17435,1361,5619,4767,145082],"class_list":["post-249422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-akura","tag-akuras","tag-also","tag-and","tag-bay","tag-chip","tag-cloud","tag-coast","tag-created","tag-escape","tag-fish","tag-floodwaters","tag-from","tag-giant","tag-helena","tag-hill","tag-in","tag-isolated","tag-leaves","tag-limbo","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-owners","tag-popular","tag-rising","tag-shop","tag-slip","tag-terrifying","tag-that","tag-uncertainty","tag-weekend","tag-whangruru"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}