Backbreaking cleanup for 'thickshake' of slurry left behind after landslide

Monday, 22 August 2022

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visits Nelson to meet residents affected by the August floods and land slips. First published August 22.

If I can offer you one piece of advice if your house has been affected by liquefied mudslides and needs earth moved, pronto, it would be this: use a rake.

While shovels are the traditional hand-tool for earth-moving, an unfortunate side effect of the earth turning into liquid is that it becomes a lot more resistant to shovels. Something to do with surface area, I assume. It’s a strange irony that the problem of landslides is the earth moving on its own, but as soon as it finds a place to settle it becomes incredibly resistant to moving again.

Cornelius Prinsloo jumped in to help - literally, ending up waist-deep behind Dan and Anna’s house after a slurry got trapped there during the Nelson floods and landslides

I spent about four hours on Saturday pitching in at Dan and Anna’s place in Stoke after a slip left a pool of sludge the consistency of a thickshake (extra thick) trapped against the back wall of their house.

Putting your foot down on what looked like perfectly solid land in the wrong spot would leave your ankle, calf, or even thigh-deep in a sucking, grasping kind of mud that sticks like glue and weighs you down.

Even the solid earth was sponge-like, welling up water that threatened socks and ankles if you were unfortunate enough to not have gumboots available.

**READ MORE:

There’s nothing glamorous about clearing out a landslide – but I’m not kidding about the rake.

* Golden Bay breathing a sigh of relief after rain inundates region

* What the water gave us: Nelson and Tasman start cleaning up the mess

Tania Dodge jumped in to push mud along with her arms after shovelling proved ineffective.

* Flood damage likely to cost 'tens of millions' of dollars

Part of the crew jumped in to help neighbours down the hill clear mud out from a slip behind their own property, but little could be done about the slurry that used to be their front lawn.

Films from my childhood may have exaggerated the danger quicksand would pose in my day-to-day life, but visuals of people and horses sinking inescapably down in a swampy quagmire were front of mind as some gave up shovelling from the sidelines as a bad job and jumped right in to shove the goop along with their arms instead.

Exactly when the slip came down is a bit of a mystery, but whenever it was, Dan woke up to find the hillside behind his house was suddenly a lot closer – though thankfully, not actually inside the house.

Anna was trapped in Blenheim, cut off from coming back until the roads have been cleared.

After an initial warning from Civil Defence to prepare to evacuate, Dan was given a heads-up from a builder friend to start relieving pressure on the side of the house, and the call went out for a working bee – within hours, about 20 people had mustered with shovels, gumboots, wheelbarrows, and refreshments to begin the arduous task of shovelling (and raking, if you were one of the lucky ones) mud somewhere where it could do no structural harm.

By the time I arrived, a lot of headway had already been made – but there was still plenty of deep, liquefied mud needing a helping hand on its way down the hill, pushed along by the “rowing team” directing the thick slurry through dug-out channels to the most direct downhill-route to the street.

Luckily there was no development or waterworks higher up the hill, so the sludge was (hopefully) just good clean dirt – but either way, there was no avoiding getting hands, shoes, clothes and just about everything else covered in mud.

The place has been left, if not clear of mud, then at least no longer actively threatened by it, but it’s not yet clear what damage was done in the initial landslide.

Honestly, I probably provided the least active assistance with moving mud, though my aching muscles would beg to disagree.

There will be a lot of stories like this one around the city and region as people pitch in to save their homes or their neighbours from as much damage as possible. In a situation like this, every little effort can be a huge help.