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Bailee Hodgson, 9, doesn’t want much. A hug and a selfie with Chris Hipkins would make her day.
Bailee’s mum, Teresa, and partner Luke Hanan, have bigger needs, though no less reasonable.
They want to know why their insurance won’t pay out on their house that has been totally devastated by a massive landslide causing by heavy rain and flooding over Auckland Anniversary weekend.
Residents of Egret Avenue, Maungatapu, gather around the barriers which guard their destroyed houses, they chat apprehensively awaiting the arrival of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.
Hipkins was in Tauranga on Thursday to meet families impacted by the devastating slip which destroyed two houses and damaged several more.
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Bailee is the youngest of five children of Luke Hanan and Teresa Hodgson, the family who had a narrow escape when the slip ploughed through their home.
When the landslide hammered down in the early hours of Sunday, January 29, Hanan and Luke thought they had lost their precious Bailee.
They hadn’t.
Her brothers had helped her climb out of a window using a mattress.
Nine days later, in her school uniform, she’d taken the tragedy of losing her home in her stride. Jumping up and down she declared she was “just going to ask him” [Hipkins] for that hug.
Commissioner Anne Tolley arrived at the site, also awaiting Hipkins along with staff from Tauranga City Council. Tolley told Stuff that council is preparing for the next possible onslaught of rain and possible slips.
Hanan had only just finished renovating his house the day before the destruction.
As residents survey the destruction that’s become their world, there’s laughter and chat, but furrowed brows and pained faces that give away the stress of the slip and its aftermath.
Hanan said he was just overwhelmed at the thought of starting their lives from scratch – from a house to cars to clothes and possessions. Everything was lost.
“How are we going to do it?” asked Luke Hanan.
“We’’ll just wait till he comes out, then we’ll ask him.” says Bailee, totally focussed on ‘mission hug’.
When the Prime Minister arrived, it was the families he approached first.
Hipkins seemed taken aback at seeing first hand the extent of the damage to the houses. Staring at Hanan’s house he told him “it was incredible you all got out”.
He asked each member of the family how they were doing.
Hanan said that it was hard that so many years of work were gone, and although they were insured, a technical issue in the insurance means that it has not been paid out as yet.
“We’d changed insurers on the Friday before it happened. That shouldn’t matter but the new company we joined is saying there’s a window of 48 hours that is not covered. I didn’t know this and unbelievably that is when the disaster happened.
“So for now they’ve declined our insurance, but we are talking to lawyers and hope we can sort this. We have to.”
Hipkins said that sounded like “a pretty unjust situation” and suggested local MPs should advocate on his behalf.
“The way insurance claims are processed has changed as a result of the Christchurch earthquake. So there are different processes now.”
Hipkins said further changes on disputes around insurance claims were in the pipeline.
Hipkins appeared moved as Hanan shared the gravity of losing everything.
“It was going to be our forever home. We worked on it six years, and we were just done. Now we don’t have a home to go to.”
An insurance payout would sort things, but in the meantime they were “okay”.
“We lost everything but we have each other. And the neighbourhood has blown us away with support.”
Another neighbour appeared and invited Hipkins into his house, traipsing through the kitchen and lounge, a trail of media and cameras in tow, so that the prime minister could survey the damage from the back.
Hipkins hitched himself up on the fence next to Bailee, so he could peer over and see how the slip had fallen on the houses.
When it was time to leave he was chased up the cul de sac by Bailee and her sister who took an arm each, beaming at the prime minister.
“For the photo,” they explained. “Of the day you came to our house.”
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