Aussie tourists in holiday house dragged down cliff in New Zealand landslide

Three Aussie tourists were trapped inside a huge holiday house when it was dragged 15m down a cliff during a landslide in New Zealand.

Three Australian tourists were trying to escape when a massive landslide hit the New Zealand holiday house they were staying in and dragged them 15m down a cliff.

Cheryl Gilroy, her husband Darren and her elderly mother were renting a home in Orua Bay, Auckland when the cliff above them gave way and knocked the house off its foundations and on to the beach below with the three of them still inside, New Zealand Herald reports.

The landslide last Wednesday saw Ms Gilroy’s mother, who is in her 80s, trapped beneath 3m of rubble for two hours while rescuers worked to get her out.

She was flown to Middlemore hospital in a critical condition where she continues to recover.

Ms Gilroy and her husband were able to escape from the wreckage although Darren Gilroy was left with serious injuries and is recovering in Auckland City Hospital.

A GoFundMe page has now been set up by a family friend to help cover the medical costs the Australian trio are facing while in hospital as well as the bills which are stacking up from their small business in Australia.

A rescue team used steel poles to hold up the roof while they saved a trapped woman in Orua Bay. Picture: Bay of Plenty Fire and Emergency

On the fundraising page, organiser Sabine Doroudgar said they sustained “terrible injuries” while “trying to escape and going down with the house”.

“What was meant to be a lovely family holiday with Cheryl’s elderly mother turned into a horrific accident resulting in long-term recovery [for] all involved,” she said.

“The ongoing medical costs and time away from their business is going to take a major toll on Cheryl and Darren. Everything is so unsure on when they can return to the business.”

The landslide was one of many around Auckland after record-breaking rain pummelled the region on January 27.

The rain caused flooding that claimed four lives as well as damaging houses and causing cliff collapses.

A house in the affluent suburb of Parnell after Auckland was hit with a historic amount of torrential rainfall. Picture: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

Dr Gary Payinda, a medic on board one of the rescue helicopters which attended the scene last week, said the house looked like it had been hit by a tornado.

He described how the Urban Search and Rescue Team had to use metal struts to hold up the roof of the house while medics tended to Ms Gilroy’s mother and rescue crews freed her from the wreckage.

“You just see a house that looks like a tornado has struck it. It’s just in pieces. It’s just a pile of rubble with the roof still in one piece but ready to tip over. The roof was perpendicular to the sand but being held up by very tiny pieces of debris and what we were afraid of was that it would have fallen down 4-5m on the patient and on rescuers,” Dr Payinda told the Herald last week.

“It was a very serious injury and she had been pinned down under all this wreckage for a long time.”

He said the crew from a second helicopter treated Ms Gilroy and her husband and flew them to hospital.

Andy Fennell was one of the first people on the scene after the bank gave way.

He told Newshub he tended to a man with a badly broken leg that had exposed the bone so he fashioned a makeshift tourniquet to help stop the bleeding.

“He looked like he was losing a fair bit of blood so I took my shoelaces out of my boots and tried to stem the blood flow,” he said.

This article originally appeared on New Zealand Herald and was reproduced with permission