A new landslip above Mangatawa Marae in Tauranga has prompted the evacuation of about 150 residents and renewed attention from insurers to slope stability, infrastructure exposure, and climate‑related hazards in New Zealand.
Tauranga City Council, assisted by New Zealand Police, relocated residents from around 30 papakāinga properties up to State Highway 2 near the southern end of Truman Lane in Pāpāmoa. Evacuees were taken to BayPark while technical assessments began. The slip occurred close to a watermain connected to a reservoir above the marae. Authorities say land movement has created a risk that further subsidence could damage the pipe, with potential consequences for both public safety and continuity of water supply.
Tauranga City Council emergency controller Tom McEntyre said council staff are inspecting the reservoir and watermain, with a geotechnical specialist assessing the slip itself. “The assessment will give a clear picture on a timeline as to when those evacuated can return to their homes,” McEntyre said. Earlier, he said the evacuation order would stay in place until further assessment was completed, citing a risk to life and property from unstable ground. For insurers and brokers, the event illustrates how a single slope failure can affect multiple classes of business simultaneously, including residential cover, business interruption, and damage or service‑disruption losses involving essential water infrastructure.
In a related development, Tauranga City Council has reduced cordons around the Mount Maunganui landslip area, allowing businesses on the Marine Parade side of Mauao to reopen under managed access conditions. Marine Parade is now open to pedestrians as far as Adams Avenue but remains closed to general traffic. Heavy trucks continue to use the road to service the recovery operation at the landslip site, and pedestrians have been asked to remain on the footpath except when crossing.
Vehicle access from Commons Avenue to Marine Parade is restricted to residents and business owners. Cordoned fencing is being extended from Pilot Bay Beach through to Mount Main Beach to separate the active recovery area from public spaces and to support police activity and site security. For commercial policyholders, these cordon changes affect access to premises, trading patterns and the timing and nature of any claims, while also highlighting the operational constraints facing councils and emergency services working in a densely visited coastal location.
The latest slip follows a series of January storms that produced fatal landslides in the Tauranga area and elsewhere on the North Island. A landslide struck a holiday park at Mount Maunganui, burying six people whom authorities say are unlikely to have survived. Earlier the same morning, another slide destroyed a house south of the city, killing two people. Landslides are New Zealand’s deadliest natural hazard, accounting for more than 1,800 deaths since written records began, a higher toll than earthquakes and volcanic eruptions combined. For underwriters, this record is gaining significance as intense rainfall events intersect with steep terrain, erosion‑prone soils, and continued development on or near slopes.
Researchers say New Zealand’s tectonic setting and climate already create a baseline of landslide risk, which is being modified by land‑use change and a warming atmosphere. The country straddles a tectonic boundary that uplifts land and produces steep slopes, while its maritime climate brings high rainfall. Land‑use practices have altered slopes through deforestation, road building, and housing construction. “Land use change has been so profound, that we just aren’t resilient,” Martin Brook, professor of applied geology at the University of Auckland, said, as reported by The Guardian. He said susceptibility mapping has improved in recent years, but the challenge is to apply that information consistently in planning and consent processes.
Dr Thomas Robinson, a senior lecturer in disaster risk and resilience at the University of Canterbury, said global warming is already intensifying tropical storms that can trigger landslides. “The more we have intense storms, the more frequently they occur, the more landslides we’re going to have, and then the more impacts we’re going to experience,” Robinson said. He cited Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023, which is estimated to have generated roughly 800,000 landslides, described by Earth Science New Zealand as one of the most extreme landslide‑triggering events recorded globally. “The losses and the impacts are increasing. We need to have a really serious conversation nationally and internationally about how we’re going to manage the risks we’re faced with,” Robinson said.
The fatalities and evacuations have coincided with political dispute over the coalition government’s climate policy, including reduced emissions targets and the cancellation of a multibillion‑dollar community resilience fund set up after Cyclone Gabrielle. Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the government had “dragged their heels on issues around climate change” and argued that “almost every major action New Zealand was taking to really tackle the challenge of climate change has been wound back under [the government’s] leadership.” Finance Minister Nicola Willis has rejected those claims, saying the government has made “significant allocations of funding towards infrastructure, flood resilience, [and] roading repair … needed to respond to the effects of climate change”. Hipkins has described the broader climate discussion as “legitimate.”
Climate scientist James Renwick, of Victoria University of Wellington, said recent storms have brought “devastation and misery” to communities. “To stop such events becoming worse, to stop them overwhelming our abilities to adapt, we must stop adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the air,” Renwick said, adding that both government and business leaders need to find ways to decarbonise the economy. Tauranga City Council has started a local inquiry into the Mount Maunganui event, and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is seeking advice on a possible government‑level inquiry, after questions from the public about whether more could have been done to reduce the risk.
Robinson noted that, despite the scale of losses, landslides often receive less sustained attention than earthquakes in New Zealand and “don’t stick in our psyche” in the same way. “If anything good can come out of this, then having a better and broader understanding of landslide risk and how to prepare for them is a positive,” Robinson said. For insurers and reinsurers, the combination of evolving hazard science, more intense storms, and shifting policy settings is likely to prompt ongoing review of pricing, portfolio concentration, and risk‑selection in high‑slope, high‑rainfall regions, as well as closer engagement with councils and planners over where and how future development proceeds.
