Precipice
Stories of landslides and community restoration in Muriwai New Zealand following the devastating 13 February 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle.
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Precipice
Do you Feel Safe? Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai: Ep. 4 Precipice Podcast.
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Kat and Andy Corbett join me in this episode. On the night of Cyclone Gabrielle, their home in Motutara Road was severely impacted by a landslide - they had to flee with their 2 sons and 2 dogs and were never to return.
They recall their individual perspectives of this traumatic event, the immediate aftermath, having to leave their home, finding emergency accommodation in Muriwai then relocating out of the area.
Precipice launched on July 20th 2026. 3 seasons will be released across 4 weeks and then the full series of 26 episodes will be available for you to listen to at your leisure.
Season 1: Cyclone Gabrielle Hits Muriwai
Season 2: Disaster Recovery and Community Restoration
Season 3: Community Initiatives after a Cyclone
Listen on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/@precipicepodcast
Follow on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/precipicepodcast
Hosted and produced by Mandy Jakich. Commissioned and funded by Muriwai Community Association, supported by the Auckland Council Recovery Office.
Kat and Andy Corbett join me in this episode.
KatI were out on the deck and I said to Andy, Do you feel safe? I don't feel safe. Do you feel safe here tonight? To stay here tonight. I didn't have a good feeling about it.
MandyTheir home in Motutara Road was severely impacted by a landslide.
AndyYes, or a pine tree, fairly large pine tree, um that's sort of coming through the back of our house through my son's bedroom. Um so yeah, that was quite shocking.
KatIf the house had been hit, we'd we wouldn't be here today having this conversation.
MandyThey had to flee with their two sons and two dogs and were never to return. Andy and Kat recall their individual perspectives of this traumatic event.
KatI I don't know if maybe I had a unique experience in that sense, but I found the profound loss of everything, being stripped down to nothing, quite empowering.
MandyWe talk about the days following the cyclone and then relocating out of the area.
KatHello, my name is Kat. I am a stay-at-home mum. I have two teenage boys. They are 14 and 16. And we're currently living in Waimauku.
AndyHi, I'm Andy Corbett. Uh I'm a self-employed engineer. Um married to Kat.
MandyAnd uh, you guys had a very traumatic time through this cyclone, as did many people. Could you please tell us how it was for you, you know, the day or the two days before the event and what you'd heard and what you were expecting?
AndyYeah, we were in a bit of a haze. We'd we just got back from Bali um and we kind of um weren't really up to the play with uh with the weather. And uh, but we heard about the storm and um yeah, noticed there'd been a few slips around Muriwai, some small ones. Um it was a little bit strange. And yeah, so saw the weather forecast, um thought, oh yeah, it it's it's probably not gonna really hit us. Um we were quite tucked away in relatively sheltered um spot in Muriwai Um, and we were uh pretty optimistic about about getting through it. Um in fact, on the yeah, six o'clock that night, um we're out on the deck and taking a video about how it was so beautiful.
MandyYou obviously weren't too concerned about it, so you probably didn't actually prepare anything, is that right?
AndyYeah, we didn't make any preparations at all. Yeah.
KatI've got a slightly different take though. Okay, Kat. So the night of the cyclone, because I'd seen we'd had a small slip that had come down if during the floods. And on the night of the cyclone, I we were out on the deck and I said to Andy, do you feel safe? I don't feel safe. Do you feel safe here tonight to stay here tonight? I didn't have a good feeling about it, although it was very calm. Um and he said, Yep, no, it's it's fine. He'd done the engineering calculations, wasn't the problem. And so that was okay. And then that evening, I I was talking to my best friend who's a super pre super prepper, and she had bags for days for everyone. I thought, oh, I'd better maybe I'll just pack a jumper and a pair of shorts for all of us randomly, and then I put the key on the banister because I thought if it's dark and we have to get out fast, that might be helpful. But that was it.
MandyDo you feel like you you had a feeling that you don't normally have in your average storm? Very much. Yep. And do you think that was because of that landslip that you'd seen?
KatUm, it was that, but also I'm I have been very wary of the cliff that was behind us since we've moved in. I mean, lived in the house for four to five, four and a half years anyway. So I was always concerned when there was I always felt uncomfortable when there was a storm.
MandyDid you ever see anything in other storms? Were there ever any any other little slides or or sort of excess water coming out of the bank?
KatIn 2018, which was that bit of big storm and everyone lost power for four or five days, we just moved in and uh all we heard was a massive thump, which was a huge pine tree that had fallen down, but didn't, you know, the cliff was stable at that stage, so it didn't hit anyone. But that was that was it really.
AndyThat week after the rains from anniversary weekend, uh our pond filled up with sand. Which is a bit of a sign. So in in in hindsight, yeah, like seeing a lot of sand coming down the stream, you know, so much that it was fit like literally filled up our pond. Um yeah, so that was unusual. That was something that happened maybe in that week, week or two beforehand.
MandyOn the night, when did you start sort of suddenly thinking actually this is more serious than we thought?
KatAt the moment we heard our house started shaking and we had to run. There was no prior indication except our dog who ran outside and was out for a while, and then he ran back in and weed on the carpet, and that's really unusual for him. Like he went out to go to the toilet, was there out for ages, came back in and then went to the toilet on the floor, and that was really strange and unusual behaviour. And I think animals are quite a good thing. I mean, I didn't want the kids to be downstairs that night either. I said, So I had us all upstairs in the house, in our bedroom, because we have a two-a double story, and the back the bedrooms are both at the back of the house, backing onto the cliff. And I wanted the boys upstairs with us that night. So we've had their matches upstairs, we're all getting ready to go to bed. And then my son said, What's that noise? And then the house just started shaking, and we all just ran down the stairway while the slide was coming down to our left. So about three meters, it was coming down about three meters away from us while we were making an exit out of the house.
AndyThere was no time to think. There was no time to um go and get something. Um the only thing I went back to get was my dog because my dog ran back ran back inside because it didn't like the rain. Um it's the only thing I went back and grabbed. Um, but yeah, like literally there was no and there was no desire to go back and get anything.
MandyWhen you felt the shaking, were you were you aware that it was actually the cliff coming down from behind your house?
AndyYeah. It was pretty unmistakable. It was loud and shaking, like you know, cracking and thunder. It was like thunder, really, going off behind the house and the whole house shaking. It kind of gave it away. You could see the trees coming down, you know, looking out the window, you could see the trees coming past. There was no mistaking what it was.
MandyAnd how were your your kids, your two boys handling things at this point?
AndyRemarkably well, I think. Yeah. Just um just getting out getting into the car um and and getting up the road to a safer place. Um and we didn't really know, we hadn't seen what the slip we couldn't see it, so we didn't actually know how big it was, or if um if it was just one, or so we yeah, we went in up to our friend's house and they the boys went inside and um sort of hang out on their couch. Um and w while we kind of waited to figure out what to do next.
KatUm we had we had to ring our neighbours because they were living right in front of us.
MandyTheir neighbour Mike Hibbert is also on the podcast.
KatAnd they were like, Oh, we haven't they hadn't heard anything, they were totally fine. Um So they they said come come to our house. So we're like, no thanks.
AndyYeah, they invited us for the for a movie, actually.
MandyIsn't it interesting how you know things affected one property and right next door didn't have the same effect? And I suppose it was lucky for you guys that you had the driveway and the car on the other side of where the actual cliff came down.
KatYeah, our whole access, our whole escape route was totally fine. We're really lucky. Yeah. We could get out with the car. I d for me, it was just we need to get down the driveway and get up the road and get to the other side of the cliff, the opposite side of the cliff, which so my friend has they've got a house up there. Um and so we made our way up there and we just sat and we rang her, sent the kids inside, sat in the driveway, just and then we just sort of started seeing all the fire engines going up and down the road. And we heard what we thought was just more thunder happening, but what that actually was was other landslides subsequently going. And we didn't have there, wasn't our designated safe space, uh safe space was actually Waimalku, but we weren't gonna go and drive there. It was too far.
MandyYeah, and there were quite a few blockages anyway on that on Muriwai Road, wasn't there? Yeah. Yeah.
AndySo around about 11 30, I think a policeman came up the road um and uh and was clearing everyone out, basically. Um so we went down to the surf club. That was an adventure driving driving down there and we stayed at the surf club. Um so that was that was um we were grateful to have that space, even though it wasn't wasn't perfect, it was it was uh safe and there was people we knew and it was dry-ish.
MandyAccess for the surf club was a little bit compromised, wasn't it, in places. Did you go down Coast Road and and across the village green at that time?
AndyYeah, uh we first of all went tried to go around to the um round through the regional park, so um past the bottom shop. Um, but there was a there was a a lake through there, uh, and then we went back around. Oh, the gate was shut, that's right. Uh yeah, then we went back across the village green, which was um yeah, which was a river. Kat drove like uh possum born and her Sabaru uh got us through. Which was fun. Um but yeah, it was it was it was definitely um everything was being tested that night.
MandyCan you talk to us a little bit about how you were feeling at that time and and what you were expecting sort of the next day?
AndyI I personally was expecting our house not to be there. Um hadn't seen it, but it yeah, just with the way it was, um had no real idea of what was gonna happen long term. It was it was sort of where am I going to take my dogs and my family? Um which is yeah, it's more grateful about having family to pick us up, um, get us out of Mirawai somewhere somewhere to stay.
MandyAnd so you were evacuated, you you were told that you weren't allowed back in your house, obviously. How did that part of the process happen?
KatThey'd cordoned off, I mean, they'd cordoned off Muriwai. They'd had a police block, I think, even by the time we were meant to leave, at the time we left in the morning. Um, so you couldn't come in or out. Um we probably could have gone to back to our house at that stage if we'd wanted to, but we had really no that was not really on our mind. Um so we just and we couldn't get our car out of the out of the surf club, it was flooded in. So we walked, we had to walk to the police cordon to get to my sister who picked us up, and then my dad. They'd put a police cordon in place, but they hadn't stopped people from going into houses. Yeah. In and in hindsight, it's yeah, we did have a few things go missing, which we that are unaccounted for, that we cannot for the life, I cannot for the life of we couldn't find. Um, and so we just wonder if that was a time when there might have been a bit of opportunist a bit of opportunism. We didn't get home for three days. So it was a so we were home and then they're like, no, you can't get back into Muriwai. I think they locked the whole place down. Um and when we did get back to the house for our 15 minutes, which was after about a week, I couldn't find my engagement ring anywhere. So it was, yeah. So it was very whether that happened, I don't know, or I put it somewhere and forgotten, but it was yeah, it was just a it was a loss that happened that yeah, may not have otherwise happened.
MandyWhen you actually went back to the house, what did you see?
AndyYeah, it was it was sort of it was actually three days uh later. Um saw that I left the front door wide open because I just run out. Uh that's the sort of, you know, that's what it that's what it was like. Um I saw from from the from the driveway side. Um, I mean you could sort of see the cliff, exposed cliff, but it wasn't really until we went round and had a look around the back of the house we could see um see a total change of our our landscape. Our our valley was probably six to seven meters full of of dirt and trees. Um and then yeah, I saw a pine tree, fairly large pine tree, um that was gonna come in through the back of our house through my son's bedroom. Um so yeah, that was quite shocking. Um yeah, it just just didn't look like our house. It didn't look like our our there was not our garden was completely gone. Everything everything was gone. It's just a muddy, muddy mess. Yeah, the house itself survived reasonably well.
KatThe house wasn't hit. If the house had been hit, we wouldn't be here today having this conversation. That's how fast that land those landslides move.
MandyYeah.
KatNo way. You can't you can't outrun them. We were just lucky.
MandyYou know, it's just hard to imagine how how you felt at that time and and how you sort of made decisions of what to do next. I mean, it's just such a you would have been in shock, I imagine. Yeah.
KatI think I think the state of shock for me was definitely two weeks of solid, just like what has just happened. Um, we were so fortunate to have family who took us in without questions. We had a bed for the night, we went and got some clothes. Like we didn't have, we were very, very um blessed in that sense. We didn't have to think too much about logistics for a few weeks, which was really helpful. And then we sort of had to start thinking about well, how do we make the transition? How do we make this as like uh easy on the boys as possible? Because for me, they were my main concern. Like they, you know, they've had a big trauma. How do we we need to stay local so that they can go to school so that we try and keep things as normal as we can for them? So the challenge was then to how where could we go? Because we had two dogs as well. So renting with dogs is really difficult.
AndySo one of my friends had was just renovating her house uh in Muriwai and um and thought it would be nice to offer it to us, uh, even with our two dogs. So very grateful. Um until we moved into it, yeah, quite a nice small house, but cozy um in up in Mosquito Bend. Um and so we stayed there uh until we bought a new house. So um for around maybe four or five months.
KatIt was nine months, wasn't it? We from March till March till October.
AndyYeah, so that was another sort of step in the in the right direction. At least yeah, we were we could be where we wanted to be. Um we were all together, we didn't have to put our dogs into onto a farm or something, which is um kind of on you know on the cards really. Um but having yeah, keeping our family together was really awesome.
KatWe we did actually have to put them into um a kennel for two weeks before we moved in or three weeks because it was too much for our family to have them as well. And we were quite stressed having them in other people's houses. Um and fortunately our contents insurance covered their stay at that kennel, which was really helpful.
MandyWell, a lot of people in Muriwai have dogs, don't they? And that sort of just added another dimension, didn't it, in a way? Definitely.
KatEspecially our dogs. I mean, our dogs we couldn't we didn't if I was gonna pack again for another storm, I would pack leashes and collars because we didn't have anything. So when we went to the surf club, I had to I went inside with the boys, but Andy stayed the whole night in the car with the dogs.
MandyOh really?
KatBecause we couldn't have them in there. And then when there were heaps of other dogs and there was just yeah, traumatized it was it was, yeah, having leashes is a good one.
MandyYeah, that's a really good idea, actually. So you were there for a while, which is is great, but it still must have been such an incredibly stressful time. What did you find was the were the biggest challenges over that time?
AndyOne of the challenges was just trying to like work. Actually, like get into some sort of headspace where I could yeah uh be productive and make some money. Um some of these practical things, um clothes, like didn't have any clothes. Um but then as it got further on, yeah, I guess it was more about trying to understand the likely outcome. Um there was just you know, it was a bit of a the it was all kind of being made up as as everyone went along and we were trying to I guess create some certainty. We really wanted to buy another house. Um and yeah, just it was constantly kind of moving. We were just trying to re-strategize um and keep pushing the in our insurance company, EQC and the assessors, um, you know, to really ride trying to ride them a little bit um so we could get we could get some certainty. Um and once we had that certainty, it allowed us to then um borrow money essentially, um, so that we could buy a house um instead of trying to wait for the settlement. We wanted to get ahead and we wanted to take back some control. We felt like we were we were just you know being swished around by politicians and insurance companies, and we just wanted to chart our own course again.
MandySo insurance kind of guaranteed that they would pay out. You hadn't heard about the Auckland Council payout at that time?
KatNo, so a a big part for for me coming out of it was you know, we had Jeremy who very quickly, we very quickly realized that this was the normal new um from a council perspective, and communication was, you know, they're just dealing with so much with the East Coast as well that we it and communication wasn't very forthcoming. Um, and so I joined the committee to help organize communications initially, so I was in the early stages of it. Um, but that was the most amazing team of doers and diplomats that came out of Mirawai. And that organization, um, particularly uh getting into the media and just being relentless with um the cause for locals, I think stood all of or certainly stood us in really good step, but I, you know, just looking at the general outcome, it seemed to be really effective and much smoother than a lot of other areas. Um I did step out of that quite quickly because I just found the process too stressful. So it's not for everyone, you know, and I think different parts of that process, different people stepped in and out of just depending. On their bandwidth and skill set. So for I was there for a couple of months and then left that. And then it was really just to focus on actually being mentally positive, like being positive and being mentally okay and making sure the kids were okay and Andy was okay and we were eating good food and just um scaffolding each other. But that was the priority, really. Once once the once the system was in place and moving and we're getting traction, I felt safe for me to be like, okay, we can the next thing really is just our mental health. At that stage, I just gone, this process is gonna run its course, I can't control it anymore. I had to actually step back and go, there's so much that you can control, which is tiny, and then there's a whole lot that I had to acknowledge I couldn't control. And it was trying to control the whole lot that was really affecting me. And so I had to make a call and say that there's good people doing good things, it's all set up, it's gonna roll the way it's gonna roll, and then just focus on what I needed to focus on to get through the rest of it.
MandyWhat were some of your strategies for for keeping things together and for sort of supporting your own mental health as well as the mental health of your family?
KatI think the biggest thing was um then really just knowing that today just to make today a good day. Let's have a really good day today and not worry about what's coming because we don't know and it's too much. I couldn't look back, I couldn't look for like we couldn't look back, we couldn't look forward. So if we just make today a really good day, there's always a silver lining, like something good out of any hardship comes there comes some sort of growth or you know, whatever that looks like. But in my my my life experience, that's certainly been the case. I was like, okay, there's gonna be a silver lining, let's just run with that one, and that really helped.
MandyAnd did you have any clarity on you know that that sort of positive thinking, like at least we're okay, and and all of that kind of thing? Could you could you sort of focus on that and that took you away from the sort of the other huge loss that you were experiencing? Or was it really hard to stay mindful of what you had? Was it was it easy to be sort of dominated by what you'd lost?
KatI I don't know if maybe I had a unique experience in that sense, but I found the profound loss of everything, being stripped down to nothing, quite empowering and liberating because I had my family, and none of we were all okay, and that for me was that for me is what is the most important in my life. So I didn't care. I actually didn't care about any of the material. I just was so grateful, and I think I just rode the gratitude wave for a really long time.
MandySoundtrack by local Muriwai band Tinn People, written in response to Cyclone Gabrielle. Ngaā Mihi, thank you to the Muriwai community for their input and bravery, and for sharing their stories, and thank you for listening.
