“It felt like an out-of-body experience”: Families evacuated during floods
A heartbroken family has opened up about the moment they were given a chilling 10 minutes to pack their belongings and evacuate their home.
The Buksh family home is situated in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, which has been smashed by torrential rain for two weeks now.
They thought they were safe on higher ground, but a warning that a landslide threatened to swallow their home saw them scrambling for their lives.
"We're so far up, we've been through bushfires, came very close to being evacuated for that as well, never in a million years did we expect our driveway to be the first thing to go," Rasleen Buksh told A Current Affair.
Upon closer inspection, Rasleen noticed some trees had disappeared from around the home as well as random rocks rolling down.
When she noticed the gaping hole underneath her driveway, she immediately called her husband Naizal and son Rashan to come home from work.
They called emergency services who gave them just 10 minutes to pack a few things and escape to safety.
"We don't know how long we had, or what's going to happen. It's scary. Very scary," Rasleen said.
The family scrambled for their paperwork and passports and at one point attempted to leave in their car but it was deemed too dangerous.
"Felt like an out-of-body experience," she said.
Now staying with friends, the Buksh family are anxiously waiting for their next move following the terrifying ordeal.
"The engineers have come and said our house is safe, and habitable, but we are still very nervous, we're going to wait it out for another couple of weeks or so.
"No one's safe in this environment."
Image: A Current Affair