“strong case” for a government inquiry<\/a> into the landslide.<\/p>\nHe announced the possibility during a media conference on Tuesday afternoon, and said many questions about last Thursday’s slip were being asked, including whether there was a missed opportunity to evacuate people sooner.<\/p>\n
“Six families are grieving the unimaginable loss of their loved ones, and they deserve answers. I acknowledge that the Tauranga City Council has ordered its own inquiry into the events leading up to the landslide at the campground.<\/p>\n
“However, I do believe there is a strong case for an independent government inquiry, and we’ll be talking to Tauranga City Council about that.”<\/p>\n
Luxon said it would be important not only for the grieving families but for helping to ensure lessons were learned to prevent similar tragedies in the future.<\/p>\n
While an independent inquiry had already been announced by local council, Luxon said there were concerns it would not be impartial if it was conducted by the council.<\/p>\n
“There’s a potentially an inherent conflict between the ownership of the campground and the council, but it’s also coming from conversations directly with the families that Mark and I had in the last 48 hours with people in Tauranga at the Mount, and their big desires to actually understand what did happen here.<\/p>\n
“I think doing that dispassionately, being able to do that very objectively, through an independent government inquiry would be the way forward.”<\/p>\n
RNZ approached the Tauranga City Council and police for comment on Monday evening on the woman’s account.<\/p>\n
“Once the recovery efforts are completed, we have secured the site\u202fand have\u202fgeotechnical assessments\u202fthat the landslide\u202farea is stable,\u202fthere will be\u202fa process undertaken to examine the events that took place before and during this tragic event,” the council’s controller Tom McEntyre said.<\/p>\n
“It would not be\u202fappropriate\u202fto\u202fmake any comment now that could affect that process or pre-empt the outcome.”<\/p>\n
In response to earlier questions from RNZ, deputy national commander Megan Stiffler confirmed FENZ received a 111 call at 5.48am on Thursday, 22 January, from a person reporting a slip near the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park.<\/p>\n
“Our call takers made contact with the Tauranga City Council, the landowners of the camping ground, and notified them of this information at 5.51am.<\/p>\n
“The landslip that was referenced in the 111 call received at 5.48am did not impact life or property and therefore Fire and Emergency did not respond firefighters to attend, instead we notified Tauranga City Council as the landowner responsible.”<\/p>\n
Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, Tauranga City Council chief executive Marty Grenfell said there was no record of a 111 call being referred to the council.<\/p>\n
However, a council statement released only hours later backtracked on this version of events.<\/p>\n
“After further enquiries, we can confirm that the Tauranga City Council’s main Contact Centre received a call from Fire and Emergency New Zealand at around 5.50am on Thursday, 22 January.”<\/p>\n
The council said the chief executive’s earlier comments referred specifically to information logged in the council’s Emergency Operations Centre, which did not receive a call.<\/p>\n
At about 9.30am a slip came down at the Beachside Holiday Park at Mount Maunganui, smashing into campervans, tents, vehicles and an ablution block near the Mount Hot Pools.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The slip at Mauao, Mount Maunganui as seen from the air. Photo: Screengrab \/ Amy Till Tauranga mayor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-253799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253799","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=253799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JUE9Q9_Mauao_png.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Tauranga](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JUCMBX_Image_20_jfif.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n