A person has been admitted to hospital with injuries after a landslide came down on top of their house as rain pummelled the Eastern Bay of Plenty triggering floods and slips.

The couple were taken to hospital by a road contractor in the early hours of Wednesday, says a spokesperson for the Tāneatua Fire Brigade.

”We didn't know anything about it until the day, so went to have a look, and the slip has come down on the house, destroying it. We checked up on the people there – the house is not inhabitable, and one of them was admitted to hospital with minor injuries.”

The couple's daughter thanked the road contractor who rushed her parents to hospital in the middle of the night.

'A huge thanks to the worker who gave my parents a ride into town after their house was wiped out ... also to the Taneatua Fire Brigade for coming out and checking while we were there today, making sure everyone was ok. So glad we have these sorts of people around in the community when tragedies happen,” she wrote on a community noticeboard.

Council are aware of the incident and are in contact with the property owners, says a spokesperson for Whakatāne District Council.

'The ground is absolutely saturated'

Whakatāne has been hit with unrelenting heavy rain, slips and surface flooding since Monday.

The Whakatāne River reached its highest level since 2019 yesterday and several communities got isolated.

MetService has lifted the heavy rain warning for the Bay of Plenty east of Te Kaha and Gisborne north of Tokomaru Bay but the wet weather of recent days has caused some small communities in the area to become cut off.

Te Uruwera councillor Andrew Iles told Morning Report he's hopeful the region had seen the worst of the current bout of wet weather.

"It's moving off now to the west coast of both islands so it's a matter now of getting our roading network up and running again today."

He says the community of Waimana had been cut off for most of yesterday but a route in and out of the community via the Wainui Road to the town's east was now open.

"State Highway 2 - the other side of the river - there's a deadly hush over there, still no traffic movement, so I'm assuming that they're still working on clearing not only the slips, but there was a lot of slash and what-have-you on the state highway network over there."

Rūatoki is also isolated due to flooding yesterday and a boil-water notice was still in place for resident there, Iles says.

"The ground is absolutely saturated so slips are always a concern. Of course Whakatāne itself, with the escarpments is always susceptible to something like that happening."

He says the priority now is to get the roading network up and running again, and he urges local residents to follow Whakatāne District Council's Facebook page or to listen to the radio for the latest updates.

A house is seen perched at the edge of a large slip in Whakatāne after heavy rain hit the area. Photo: RNZ / Ashleigh McCaull.

-Annemarie Quill/RNZ.

Additional reporting by RNZ.