Tauranga City Council announced at 8.56am that it was closing the walking tracks<\/a> around the popular tourist spot as severe weather had \u201csignificantly destabilised the maunga, creating an ongoing risk of further slips and falling debris\u201d.<\/p>\nBut the officials made no evacuation orders for the holiday park or the neighbouring Mount Hot Pools \u2013 both of which are council-owned.<\/p>\n
Then about 9.30am, another slip \u2013 this time deadly \u2013 came crashing down, flattening a toilet block, tents and caravans.<\/p>\n
McHardy said emergency services didn\u2019t visit until after the 9.30am disaster. <\/p>\n
He said he is struggling with guilt, despite his efforts to raise the alarm.<\/p>\n
![\"]()
Mount Maunganui local Alister McHardy says he tried to raise the alarm about smaller land slips on the mountain several hours before Thursday’s deadly one, but was told by 111 to ring the council. Photo \/ Alanah Eriksen<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m kicking myself, I should have kicked up more of a fuss.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Friday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Tauranga Mayor Mahe Drysdale were asked at a press conference why campers weren\u2019t evacuated after the first slips.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of questions to be answered, and we are determined to answer those questions,\u201d Drysdale said.<\/p>\n
![\"Emergency]()
Emergency services searching for people after a slip at the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will go through a proper process, it will be public.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur focus right now is on the rescue effort and supporting those affected, along with the emergency services and our staff working on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mayor added: \u201cRight now our focus is on emergency services, supporting them and supporting those families\u201d.<\/p>\n
He has since announced an independent review which will examine the events leading up to the landslide.<\/p>\n
![\"The]()
The Mount Maunganui campground on Saturday. Photo \/ Jason Dorday<\/p>\n
\u201cAs council, on behalf of the families and the whole community, we need to understand the facts and ensure that in the lead-up to this tragedy, everything was done that was appropriate in the circumstances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to note that while we work to stand up this review, our immediate focus remains on supporting the families affected and those responsible for the rescue operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luxon said at the press conference, \u201cAfter all of these tragedies, we do an after-action review [that will ask] what have we learned?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McHardy\u2019s call log, seen by the Herald, shows he rang 111 at 5.47am, but he claims, \u201cthey said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51464,21045,74,145335,1559,11551,702,56662,440,17707,13233,11692,111,43,139,69,12663,144964,1560,418,64572,89818,11767,1237,20107],"class_list":["post-249970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-51464","tag-above","tag-after","tag-call-to","tag-called","tag-hours","tag-it","tag-landslide","tag-local","tag-maunganui","tag-mount","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-photo","tag-precariously","tag-report","tag-shows","tag-slip","tag-slips","tag-standing","tag-two","tag-walkers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249970","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=249970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}