Mum's tribute to 'beautiful' toddler swept from her arms in NZ floodwaters
A New Zealand family recalls how a two-year-old girl was tragically swept away by floodwaters in the devastation caused by ex-cyclone Gabrielle.
The pregnant mother of a toddler swept to her death in floodwaters in New Zealand has described the “insurmountable mountain” of grief her family now faces in the wake of the tragedy.
Eight people have so far been killed as New Zealand continues to deal with the devastation of ex-cyclone Gabrielle.
Ella Collins was at home with her husband Jack and daughters Imogen, 4, and Ivy, 2, when water tore through their Eskdale house on the North Island at around 3am on Tuesday as Cyclone Gabrielle bore down, the New Zealand Herald reported.
With all lights out inside the property and the water just 10cm from the ceiling, the couple made a split-second decision to take a child each on their shoulders and make their way to a neighbour’s roof.
But as they emerged from their flood home, horror struck.
“They’ve got a kid each, they go out the door and another wave comes through on the way over to this house,” Jack’s brother Adam Collins told the publication. “It takes her [Ella] away. She says, save Imogen.”
After scrambling into the neighbour’s home and ripping open the roof, Jack leaves little Imogen inside while he goes back out for his wife and child.
“He finds his wife floating around and manages to get her back to safety... but by that time they’d lost the little one,” Adam said. “There’s nothing they could have done.”
While Ivy’s father spent hours in the dark trying to find her, the rest of his family sat with neighbours inside the roof space for eight hours before they were rescued.
The next day, the toddler’s body was found.
A mother grieves for her ‘beautiful baby girl’
In a tribute to her “beautiful baby girl”, Ella said Ivy “charged through life with a beautiful smile on her face regardless of what stood in her way.
“She had a great sense of humour, was very creative and determined to overcome obstacles,” the mother said. “We were not wealthy at all, but we lived such rich and love-filled days.”
“Right now it seems an insurmountable mountain, but we have each other, my husband Jack, our daughter Imogen, our baby due in August and our families, friends and community. We all have each other.”
Thousands dig deep for heartbroken Collins family
A Givealittle fundraising page has since been set up to raise funds for the Collins family.
“In the space of five minutes you lost so much,” the organiser Hayley McMaster said. “Beautiful Ivy, your house, your land and your belongings.”
So far more than NZ$138,000 has been raised since the page was launched on Thursday.
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