A red zoned property in Christchurch has been cordoned off after a hillside rock the size of a van broke off and smashed into the house.
Not much is left of the home’s deck after a three tonne boulder smashed through it with such force that the house is lucky to still be standing.
According to locals the rock came down at about 7:15pm last night, and was so loud Trudy Beatson rushed out to her backyard to watch it.
“I heard this loud crashing noise and ran outside and could hear a rock crashing down through trees,” she says.
“I saw the actual rock come down and hit the house, the house shook and there was a huge cloud of dust.”
There have been questions over the stability of the rocks perched above some of Christchurch’s hillside suburbs ever since the February 2011 earthquake.
Last night has shown that some are so loose they don't even need an aftershock to bring them down.
“That was sort of the weird thing it was totally out of the blue,” says Ms Beatson.
The house it hit is both red stickered and red zoned, so luckily no one's been living there for nearly two years.
Almost all the neighbouring sections have also been written off by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA).
Terry Huggins' property is one of them, but despite yesterday’s rock landing just metres away he's refusing to leave.
“If I was next door at the bottom of that gully I would be really worried, but I’m not.”
After last night, that's something he might want to reconsider
3 News
source: newshub archive
