Thirty years on and the pain and horror of the Abbotsford landslip remains for many of the former residents of the Dunedin suburb.
Cracks in the hill, first noticed weeks earlier, opened up into a chasm, toppling houses and stranding 17 petrified residents for two hours on that August night.
No-one was killed, but 69 homes were destroyed.
Afterwards a commission of inquiry said it hoped the lessons learned from Abbotsford would increase the flexibility of authorities in dealing with future disasters.
But 30 years later that is little consolation for some of those who lived through the nightmare of that time.
Former Abbotsford resident, Nancy Hooper, for example, did not make it to a meeting of those involved on the 25th anniversary of the slip.
Right up to that afternoon she was planning to go, but decided she could not face it without her husband Graeme.
He died seven years after the slip.
"He never ever got over it," Mrs Hooper said.
Her family still thought about Abbotsford "all the time" and talked about it often, she said.
Before the main slip, but after a massive crack developed in their back yard over 10 days, the Hoopers vacated their house.
It had broken their hearts, Mrs Hooper said, especially that of her husband who built the house himself 18 months before, to watch it be destroyed.
"How would you like to build a big house, put your heart and soul into it and see two bulldozers smash it down."
Abbotsford had been a nice neighbourhood, with lots of young families who sought advice from older neighbours, and mothers who attended kindergarten and Plunket together.
A baker and a butcher delivered meat to the area weekly.
"It was a real community."
When the Hoopers were forced out of their home, they went to stay at a house along the street.
Several days later that family had to vacate their home.
And so it continued.
"I remember thinking, God, we're homeless, we're like refugees."
Before the slip, her husband had taken on the authorities in a personal battle, initially defying a demolition order, and at one stage, to the delight of his neighbours, ripping up a copy of the Earthquake and War Damages Act and throwing it on the floor at a public meeting.
It was a highly emotional time.
"I could feel him shaking right through our clothes when he sat back down next to me."
After the main slip, many families returned to Abbotsford every day for weeks, but eventually the Hoopers decided to stop looking back, Mrs Hooper said.
"You get through it and move on."
Residents had all sorts of experiences connected with the slip, "mostly bad", and "absolutely" there was still anger about events surrounding it, particularly the insurance and mortgage issues that followed, she said.
Former Abbotsford resident Thelma Emslie said she had only really been able to talk about the slip in the past five years.
Now she thought it should be discussed.
"It something we shouldn't forget about; it could happen again somewhere."
For two hours on August 8, 1979, the Emslies - Thelma, Colin and their two daughters - were stranded with 13 others in the middle of the New Zealand's biggest urban landslip.
With the exit from their house blocked, the family headed into neighbouring farmland with their neighbours.
Mr Emslie had taken his hand-held amateur radio with him and talked with civil defence and fire service staff, guiding them to where the group had planted themselves as land moved all around them.
Within two hours, the group was rescued by firefighters, who strung a rope across the bottom of the slip.
All told, the knoll on which they stood moved, intact, about 70m down the slope in the two hours they were stranded.
"It was absolutely terrifying."
The Emslies' Mitchell St house did not fall into the slip, but was later removed for relocation.
Strangely, it was the small things that occupied Mrs Emslie's mind in the days following the slip - like not being able to try and retrieve the family cat until four days later.
Being otherwise prevented from returning to their home after the slip meant they did not get proper closure, she said.
"It was like burying someone too quickly," she said.
Even 30 years later the emotions of that time are still near the surface for many of the victims of the landslide.
The Emslies recalled the anger among the 250 people who attended the anniversary meeting.
"I could not believe the anger that was in that hall 25 years later," Mrs Emslie said.
Mr Emslie said it was true there was still a feeling of disillusionment and resentment among residents who felt some of the authorities had treated them "like a herd of cattle".
Residents felt they had been kept in the dark, and had not had their concerns listened to, and that still rankled.
"The people who stood to lose the most had the least say in things.
We understand there were safety issues, but people were not dealt with appropriately."
One couple who still live in Abbotsford - their house missed by the slip - say they do not really think about the slip anymore, other than when interested people, such as visitors or pupils doing school projects, ask them about it.
It has been a long time since a large downpour made them nervous.
That absence of concern is helped by a series of meters along the slip's edge, which monitor the earth's movement.
They are checked about three times a year.
While they felt it was better to put it behind them, they agreed people with local knowledge had not been listened to during the disaster, especially the work of local quarryman the late Ken Scurr, who predicted the day, and down to within one hour, the time the land would finally let go.
While they felt it was better not to let the disaster continue to affect them, they agreed Mr Scurr's assessment of the hillside's instability should have been listened to by the authorities.
Former Otago Daily Times journalist Tim Preston, now of Auckland, covered the slip from the first cracks through to the aftermath.
It was understandable how people who had lost their homes and all their possessions and experienced massive upheaval might still feel three decades later, he said.
He recalled arriving in Abbotsford just as the main slip came sliding down the hill.
"I still have vivid memories of this horrendous noise as this chasm was opening up and there were power lines pinging around. I was watching as a driveway peeled off and cars fell in."
He went to a nearby house to phone in his first impressions to the Otago Daily Times newsroom.
However, the house began to shake and he cut short the call.
Given the magnitude of what happened, he believed civil defence staff had done a great job and deserve a bouquet for the fact no-one died in the slip.
"They made sure everyone was informed and safety was paramount at a time when that would be very difficult to do given the pressure they were under from media and residents wanting to stay, and to ensure the public's safety."
The landslip
> The first signs of movement in Abbotsford happened in early June 1979, the first house being evacuated on July 1.
> Residents were angry the government refused to declare Abbotsford a special area and allow the Earthquake and War Damage Commission to pay full market value on damaged houses.
> Greased by heavy rain, hail and snow, the slip took off at a rate of a metre a minute just after 9pm on August 8.
> It carried 53 houses 100m downhill. Sixty-nine houses were destroyed and hundreds of people displaced.
> The slip created a chasm estimated 150m wide and 30m deep.
> A commission of inquiry found the land had been geologically unstable, perhaps for thousands of years.
> I t also said the 1968 excavation by the Ministry of Works of a large volume of fill for roadworks from Harrisons Pit, at the toe of the slip, could have been a "causative factor".
> A leak from a Dunedin city water main through the area also "could have been significant".
> Earthquake and War Damage Commission legislation and its rules covering compensation for properties damaged by landslips were reviewed after the events at Abbotsford.
> The report said it was unfortunate Abbotsford residents had not been made fully aware of their rights under the legislation of the time and that attempts to inform them had not been entirely successful.
