A grieving Hawke's Bay man is angry about the way he was treated by authorities during one of the saddest moments of his life.
A slip hit Bill Chrystal's home in the middle of the night, killing his partner Shona Wilson.
He says the deeply traumatic event was compounded by the way police reacted in the hours and days that followed.
He and Shona lived with her daughter Skye in Tūtira - a farming community inland from Napier which remains cut off by road.
Raw pain has been left behind in Cyclone Gabrielle's wake.
Chrystal is part of one of the 11 families coming to terms with the loss of a loved one.
"Everything... it's taken everything. It's just ripped my heart clean out and yeah it's taken everything," he said.
Chrystal and his step-daughter Skye survived a terrifying experience but Skye's mother and Chrystal's partner of nine years Shona Wilson didn't make it.
The night of Cyclone Gabrielle, Wilson and Skye went to bed and Chrystal fell asleep on the couch. It's why he's alive today.
He woke up at 3am on Valentine's Day with his world falling down around him and his soul mate missing.
"Trying to find mum, find Shona, screaming her name. Screaming her name," Chrystal told Newshub.
"It all happened at once, the noise of the house falling in. It felt like the biggest earthquake you could imagine. I thought 'wow, like this is the end of time'.
"I realised it wasn't an earthquake, the whole hill had come down.
"The slip had gone right through the house taking cars, the caravan right out into this other paddock.
"It was about then that I felt the rain. [It was] like someone had just pulled the plug out of the sky. It was just chaos."
He never gave up digging all through the night and all through the day.
At this point, there was still hope she was alive, tucked away in a cavity, but then Chrystal said they found where Wilson last was.
"We found the bed. We found her. So we found her and they dragged me away. [They] didn't want me to see because that made it so real. That she was gone and there was no hope," Chrystal said.
But while he was still determined to free her from the mud, his efforts were brought to a sudden stop.
"The helicopter arrived back with someone else and he just shut the scene down and said it was a crime scene," Chrystal said.
When Newshub asked 'how did you feel?', Chrystal told Newshub: "Pissed off. Really pissed off. That was my soul mate there. I couldn't protect her, I couldn't save her but at least I could get her out."
All he wanted was to see and touch his partner's body.
"I said I want to hold her [they said] 'nah we can't let you do that'."
Chrystal said to have called it a crime scene was incredibly distressing. It was clear to everyone the slip had killed her.
"The crime is we didn't have enough warning, the crime is they downplayed the cyclone. We went to bed with a false sense of security," Chrystal said.
And that trauma was compounded by police when they went against his wishes and took her body away immediately. It was six days before she was returned to him.
"Nothing's gonna bring Shona back and I know it was mother nature that took her from me but I think these people who run the show need to look seriously at themselves," Chrystal told Newshub.
Police told Newshub the scene was unstable.
"This was an extremely distressing callout, with difficult conditions, and an extremely damaged house," Eastern District Commander Superintendent Jeanette Park said.
Police said: "The fast-moving events of that night meant our staff were not able to follow all normal protocols."
Chrystal promised Wilson if anything ever happened to her he'd look after Skye and said it's pure luck he can fulfil that promise.
When Newshub asked Chrystal how close it came to taking him and Skye out, Chrystal said "real close. Just luck, pure pure luck".
He said Wilson went to bed that night knowing she was loved.
Now, it's their whanau's love that will carry Chrystal and Skye forward into their new life without her.
A Givealittle page has been set up to help the family who has limited insurance.
