A woman thought she was experiencing an earthquake when a huge bubbling mud pool appeared in her backyard on Tuesday morning. "I got woken up about 2am thinking 'oh there's a huge earthquake happening here', there was a lot of shaking and jolting," Susan Gedye told Radio New Zealand. The Rotorua resident did not know, at that point, that a muddy geyser had started swallowing her property.
After the shaking and jolting continued for some time, Ms Gedye went to check out her kitchen - where she saw what really was going on.
"I could see the steam all over the kitchen windows and then could really hear it, and so I looked out the kitchen window and just saw a big geyser coming out of the ground, from the pipe in the bank."
Rotorua is a popular tourist spot in New Zealand, famous for its geothermal mud pools which can shoot geysers into the air.
On Wednesday morning, according to the Guardian, Ms Gedye discovered that the geyser had only grown bigger. It had also started flinging mud into the air.
"When the morning came ... it had turned into a huge mud geyser so that was kind of spectacular but different and a little bit scary," Ms Gedye told Radio New Zealand, adding that she saw mud flying 10 metres into the air.
"An active mud pool has developed at the site and a safety cordon has been put in place," wrote the Rotorua Lakes Council, sharing pictures of the site. "Geothermal activity is unpredictable and while the ground may look safe it is currently unstable and could change at any time."
Authorities also found a sinkhole under Ms Gedye's kitchen, forcing her and her family to move out. "Since yesterday the mud pool has grown in size and further ground has collapsed on the property," Rotorua Lakes Council posted in an update.
Ms Gedye is now living with her father.
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