Three generations of a “lovely” family lived in the Papamoa home in which a grandmother and her grandson were killed in a landslide yesterday.

Confirmation of the deaths came from a surviving family member who said, “It’s our house and our family lost”. However, they did not directly provide details on who had died in the slip that claimed two lives.

A person close to the family told the Herald they understood it was the grandmother and her 10-year-old grandson who died.

Images of the hillside above Welcome Bay Rd this morning show a home completely taken out by a large slip, but with a mangled roof and house frame still standing above the rubble.

The Herald has also spoken to a neighbour of the family who described them as “amazing people”.

“They were one of those families that don’t hesitate to come and help you for any reason and check on you, and see how you were. Excellent neighbours, honestly.

“It’s just unfair, when it happens to a very lovely family, lovely people. You don’t wish this on anyone, but on top of it, they were amazing people.”

Images of the hillside above Welcome Bay Rd this morning show a home completely taken out by a large slip, but with a mangled roof and house frame still standing above the rubble. Photo / Michael Craig

The neighbour said a New Zealand man had lived in the area for a long time. He had lived with his wife, their son, and also the parents of his wife at the property on Welcome Bay Rd.

The mother and her parents immigrated from somewhere in Asia, the neighbour said.

“I know that he’s been here for ages. He’s a Kiwi, and once we talked about how this area was before anyone was here, and how people grew up here.

“He told us stories about other neighbours [in the past].”

On Thursday night about 8.30pm, police confirmed they had recovered two bodies from the site of the slip. Emergency services were called to the incident at about 4.15am earlier that day. Another person was seriously injured in the slip.

Two people were killed after a landslip on Welcome Bay Road, Papamoa, Tauranga. Photo / Michael Craig

In Mount Manganui just a few kilometres north on the Bay or Plenty coastline, another massive slip at a Mount Maunganui campground has left six people unaccounted for and two confirmed dead.

However, the resident of Welcome Bay Rd said she never had any sense a slip could occur on the hills rising above them just a kilometre inland from the beach.

“You would never imagine you would have a slip because it was solid. You know when you feel like it’s a crumbly mountain that you feel something will come falling at some point. It wasn’t, it was a 100% solid hill. It was a hill covered in grass, you would see cattle, you would see lambs. From time to time you would see lambs coming into your property.”

The father at the property also built a garage and a chicken coop with up to 30 chickens on the property, the neighbour said.

“He was a big fan of cars, so he would have car parts a lot. He was a handyman, so he was always doing things on the property, building and mowing the lawns and everything.

The Welcome Bay Rd, Tauranga, slip, believed to be the scene of the double fatality. Photo / Michael Craig

“They had a big chicken coop beside the house, one of the fun things of the house was to feed the chickens. It was a very big chicken area that is also gone [in the slip].”

The neighbour also confirmed the relative age of the boy who is understood to have been among the two victims.

“I’ve seen the boy many times and it looked like a 9, 10 year old boy. When I heard there was an elderly person and a kid missing that I was around 10 years old, I said, yeah, that sounds like them.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has skipped the annual Rātana celebrations today and instead travelled to weather-hit regions after a tropical storm hit the top of New Zealand on Wednesday.

Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said it could take “days” for families to get answers given the complexities at the scene of the Mount Maunganui campground landslide.

Anxious family members of those missing have gathered at the campground awaiting news of their loved ones as recovery efforts continue.