Cracks in Lighthouse Road, Akaroa which led to some houses being evacuated due to landslip fears. Photo: Christchurch City Council
A Banks Peninsula woman whose daughter has been evacuated from her Akaroa home because of a slip says it has been a stressful week worrying about whether it will get worse.
Christchurch City Council extended the state of emergency for the peninsula on Thursday - a week after heavy rain caused widespread flooding and slips.
Council controller Helen White said the threat of further slips remain, and they will reassess the state of emergency on Saturday.
Staff were monitoring a slip on Lighthouse Road, with four homes in the area evacuated as a precaution.
Shireen Helps said her daughter could not go home.
"It's very, very stressful, and especially something like that that's sort of hanging over your head and you don't know whether [the slip] is going to come down or not... it's all pretty dreadful really," she said.
Helps' daughter did not wish to speak publicly, but praised civil defence and the council and said her family was being updated twice daily about the situation.
Council controller Anne Columbus said crews were keeping an eye on the slip with more rain forecast on Friday.
"We know from last week that it was moving when we had the rain present and we're expecting around 20 to 25 millimetres so we're just wanting to make sure people and their properties are in a safe space," she said.
"We actually had 29 slips in total across Christchurch district from last week's weather event, the vast majority of those were in Banks Peninsula too and our grounds and soil here are really saturated so there's the potential for additional rain creating more slips, but our focus is definitely around Lighthouse Road.
"We've got four families out of their properties at the moment, but we've also got people who are running their businesses from the back of Lighthouse Road towards the coast so there's quite a few people that are impacted."
Helps said the slip was in a similar spot to a historical slip in 1993 that caused major disruption. She was living in the Lighthouse Road house at the time and had to evacuate.
"We were out of that house for six months and the road was closed for a whole year," she said.
"This new slide is just up above the old one, it's not as big... the house still has the clay bunds that EQC put around it from last time so it's well protected and it's a bit off to the side out of the path of this one so it should be quite safe there really."
Helps said her penguin tour business Pōhatu Penguins had been forced to temporarily close because of the significant storm damage to Lighthouse Road, the only road up to the Flea Bay colony.
"Thank goodness it's not at a busy time of the year but still it's having quite an impact on us because of course we have got bookings which we've got to refund," she said.
Little River was swamped by floodwaters last week. Photo: Christchurch City Council
Homes and businesses in Little River were swamped by floodwaters after more than 200mm of rain fell on the peninsula, however no homes were red or yellow-stickered in the region.
Farmland was submerged and some properties in Akaroa were inundated with sewage.
Mayor Phil Mauger declared a state of emergency for both Christchurch and Banks Peninsula last Thursday, with the city recording its fourth wettest day on record, although it was lifted in Christchurch on Sunday.
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