By Adam Carey
A retiree has described running for safety after his neighbours’ house came crashing down and then helping to drag a badly injured council worker from the debris.
Paul Willigenburg and his wife Denise were in their McCrae home on the morning of January 14, when the house next door was destroyed by tonnes of waterlogged soil that collapsed from above.
Retiree Paul Willigenburg leaves the County Court after giving evidence in the inquiry into the McCrae landslides. Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“It was a really, really loud rumbling noise and then a massive crash. I heard my wife scream out that the house has come down, and we just ran, absolutely ran out of the house,” Willigenburg told the inquiry into a series of landslips in the area.
Outside, he came upon a seriously injured municipal surveyor who had been inspecting the house.
“He was in a terrible condition,” Willigenburg said. “He was screaming and he had blood on his head. He had shards of glass sticking in his head.”
The Mornington Peninsula Shire council employee jumped from the balcony of the house as it slid down the hill and was treated in hospital for his injuries.
A holiday house owned by the Moran family was destroyed in a landslide in McCrae on January 14.
Willigenburg became emotional and had to pause to compose himself as he recounted being one of a small group of residents who moved the injured man from the wreckage, which was still moving and an imminent threat to his life.
“I was on the phone with a dispatcher … they said, ‘Best as you can, because he’s obviously seriously injured, drag him as far away as you can’.”
The Willigenburgs had to evacuate their Point Nepean Road coastal home in November 2022 because of a series of landslides, and have now also been forced to evacuate their nearby rental after the January 14 collapse.
The inquiry is probing the cause of four landslides that occurred in a residential neighbourhood of McCrae between November 2022 and January this year, and how to prevent future landslides there.
Potential causes being investigated include building works and vegetation removal, natural springs, a burst water main, and whether the council adequately managed erosion risks.
The escarpment was saturated, and water had been flowing heavily through street gutters and drains for weeks before the house collapsed, despite minimal recent rain. There was so much running water seeping out of the ground that the roads had become cracked and spongy in some locations uphill from the landslide.
More than 20 homes were placed under an emergency evacuation order after January 14; eight orders remain in force.
The Willigenburgs still have no clarity on when it will be safe to return to their property.
Denise and Paul Willigenburg have been prevented from moving back into their McCrae home since November 2022.Credit: Simon Schluter
They have been permitted on one occasion, in April this year, to go back to gather essentials. The home had been ransacked, with jewellery, watches and a laptop computer stolen.
Fellow McCrae resident John Bolch, a highly experienced plumber, was tasked by a community group with inspecting the source of the water flowing heavily through the area at the start of the year.
Bolch, together with Kevin Hutchins, identified a burst water main uphill from the landslide site, near the Mornington Peninsula Freeway.
Pressure testing led him to calculate that the burst main had leaked approximately 1.4 million litres of water a day, and about 84.4 million litres of water between early November and December 31, when South East Water sealed the leak.
McCrae resident John Bolch investigated the source of the water that may have led to the landslide.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
The figures were verified by a licensed plumber, who estimated that 81.8 million litres had flowed from the burst water main, enough to fill about 33 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
On Monday, the owners of the destroyed house at 3 Penny Lane spoke of feeling lucky to be alive, but emotionally broken by the disaster and still searching for answers.
Homeowner Nick Moran said it was “just a fluke that it [the landslide] hasn’t taken out my whole family.”
“We’re a pretty resilient family, but this has broken us. And my wife’s one of the strongest people you can come across, and she’s still not sleeping,” he said.
Moran, an IT director, told the inquiry he bought the $2 million property as a holiday home in March 2023, shortly after selling a business he founded at age 19.
“We were looking to sort of reward the family and have something pretty special for us,” Moran said.
Before the purchase, they were given no information about the landslides that happened in 2022 until Moran’s wife Kellie found stories online and they pressed the real estate agent for information.
The family eventually learned that two other neighbouring households had to evacuate after the landslides of 2022.
The Morans’ house at 3 Penny Lane, at the base of an escarpment in McCrae, before it was destroyed in a landslide on January 14.
The Moran family had to leave their property when it was damaged by a landslide on January 5 that pushed the second-storey laundry into a hallway and sent water flowing through the house.
“It was almost like a waterfall down the stairs … there was a lot of debris, a lot of dirt, a lot of water,” Moran said.
The hearing continues with a report due on June 18.
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