Cyclone Gabrielle: Tauranga family flees as gum tree crashes through roof of Bellevue rental

Within two minutes of Nasib Khan arriving home to his partner and daughter, they were running for safety from a gum tree crashing through their roof.

The Tauranga dad has lived in the downstairs unit of the Ngatai Rd property with his wife and their 3-year-old daughter for three years.

He was at work in Katikati last night when a friend checking his property called, urging him to come home as the trees were “badly shaking”.

As soon as he arrived home, Khan and his wife made a plan to leave but within minutes they heard a “boom” as a tree fell on the house. The house “suddenly moved” and they rushed to leave, he said.

“It happened in the two minutes from when I got home.

“Me and my partner were talking in the room that we needed to stay at our friend’s house tonight. Suddenly boom - within seconds the tree fell down.”

“I was feeling so scared because we were all in the same room - me, my baby and my wife. I just held my baby and we ran away.”

Khan said at the time he was particularly worried about the tenants upstairs who had a newborn, but thankfully no one was hurt.

“Our neighbours opened their doors and we just went to their house.”

Speaking on Tuesday morning, Khan said the family had stayed with a friend overnight but were uncertain where they would live permanently.

It was a “pretty hard” night, particularly for their daughter who had woken up in an unfamiliar environment, he said.

“She was a bit scared and unsettled last night.”

“We don’t have privacy and now we don’t know what to do. Houses are quite expensive in Tauranga.

“We are not living here anymore unless it is fixed. We don’t know where we need to go.”

He said they managed to recover important belongings before the house started flooding.

Property owner Margaret Brown described the situation as “dreadful” but said it was most important tenants were safe.

Brown, who has owned the house since 1988, said the downstairs unit had flooded because of the “big hole” in the roof. And she was anxious about how much damage rain would cause in the coming days.

“Rain was pouring in. It has gone through the ceiling and into the downstairs apartment.”

She was waiting for an assessor from her insurance company to survey the damage, saying they could not remove the tree or start repairs until then.

“It’s the constant worry - you want to get things done but you can’t.”

She said the gum tree had never caused any problems in the past and seeing it uprooted was “unbelievable”.

“It wasn’t as if the canopy was heavy, obviously the ground has gotten so sodden it’s made it loose around the roots - the wind just caught it at the wrong time.”

The property management company was organising accommodation for the upstairs tenants, she said.

A spokeswoman for Fire and Emergency New Zealand said a crew was called to the Bellevue property about 10pm.