The deadly Mauao and Papamoa landslides have forced a reckoning with how a well-known natural hazard is managed, mapped and communicated to the public, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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Recovery paused as risks remain acute
The recovery operation at Mount Maunganui remains halted after a pause was called late on Sunday morning due to fresh instability detected on the hillside above the campground. Police evacuated the scene shortly before noon, with Bay of Plenty district commander superintendent Tim Anderson saying it would be “foolish” to continue work while experts assessed a new crack forming on the slope. The pause, police said, was made in the interests of safety, with geotechnical specialists continuing daily assessments and additional equipment being brought in to mitigate risk.
The shift from rescue to recovery has already confirmed the worst for six families. Those killed were Lisa Maclennan, a Waikato-based costume maker and arts tutor; Susan Knowles and her long-time friend Jacqualine Suzanne Wheeler, both 71; 15-year-olds Sharon Maccanico and Max Furse-Kee from Auckland; and Swedish tourist Måns Loke Bernhardsson, 20. Prime minister Christopher Luxon said the country was united in grief. “To the families who have lost loved ones – every New Zealander is grieving with you.”
Aotearoa’s hidden hazard
As Auckland University applied geology professor Martin Brook writes in the Conversation, landslides are New Zealand’s most lethal natural hazard. “Since written records began in 1843, they have been responsible for more deaths than earthquakes and volcanic eruptions combined,” he notes. Heavy rainfall weakens surface soils and highly weathered rock, particularly in regions such as the Bay of Plenty, Northland and the Coromandel, allowing shallow slips to detach suddenly and with devastating force.
At Mauao/the Mount, the danger was not hidden. Brook says that high-resolution mapping and earlier geotechnical investigations show layers of debris deposited by previous slips beneath the campground. “In other words, the site itself sits atop the remnants of past slope failures.”
Locals raise concerns about lack of warning
On Saturday, Tauranga City Council confirmed it had ordered an independent review into the circumstances leading up to the landslide, while Civil Defence says it will also examine its response once operations are complete. Central to that scrutiny is why landslide risk was not mentioned in an emergency mobile alert sent to Bay of Plenty residents the day before the slip, which focused instead on flooding and travel hazards.
Reporting by Paora Manuel of the Waikato Times highlights the unease felt by locals who noticed early signs of movement on the mountain hours before the major collapse. Manuel also points to a 2025 WSP report for council that found Mauao experienced at least eight landslides during intense rainfall associated with Cyclone Wilma in January 2011. The report warned that steep volcanic slopes were vulnerable to renewed failure during heavy rain or earthquakes – a risk that, critics argue, should have featured more prominently in public warnings.
When real disasters are dismissed as fake
The tragedy has also exposed a more unexpected fault line: trust in what people see online. Writing for The Spinoff this morning, Madeleine Chapman describes how footage of the Mauao landslide posted to the BBC’s TikTok was dismissed by some commenters as AI-generated, despite being real user-recorded video later broadcast by mainstream outlets. The claims were corrected by New Zealanders who could vouch for the authenticity of the footage, but not before sowing doubt during a live emergency.
As generative AI has flooded social platforms with fake disaster imagery, scepticism has become a reflex and shocking, unfamiliar scenes risk being dismissed as too spectacular or surreal to be trusted. As Chapman puts it: “It’s a double edged sword, where real footage is accused of being fake, while fake footage fools millions around the world every day.”
