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A man is missing after severe flooding struck New Zealand’s capital, with other Wellington residents sharing their survival stories after record rain hit on Sunday night.

Philip Sutton was looking after a property for his sister in Karori, in Wellington’s west, when a torrent of flood water smashed through it early on Monday, according to local reports. Sutton has not been seen since.

Other residents in the city, which is known for its houses perched on hills, have told stories of evading landslides and escaping rising flood waters.

Wellington mayor, Andrew Little, told Radio New Zealand that Wellington was drenched by 77 mm (3 inches) of rain in less than an hour, its heaviest rainfall on record.

CJ Koshar told the New Zealand Herald he was sleeping when he was woken by a loud rumbling noise coming from the roof.

“Suddenly, a few seconds later, I saw that the cracks are coming out of the wall and the whole wall came out,” he told the newspaper.

Koshar said he tried to hold up the collapsing wall but escaped when he realised his efforts were futile. Photographs inside his two-storey house in Brooklyn showed an entire wall caved in on his bedroom.

An 87-year-old woman told the Post she was woken by her dog and had to scramble to the top of her wardrobe as waters inside her home quickly rose.

Photographs on social media showed cars battered and overturned, and one vehicle sitting on a fence after it had floated away in the flood waters.

Various streets in the city were evacuated and fire and emergency service said on Monday they had responded to 150 calls for assistance.

Tim McPherson, who on Tuesday morning was helping clean up debris near the home where Sutton vanished, said the flooding was the worst he had ever seen in the area.

He told Stuff that a huge macrocarpa tree had come down and effectively dammed a nearby river, causing the flooding to Sutton’s home.

“A bunch of trees came down and blocked the entrance to the creek, it would have been about a metre deep over the road, it washed a car away,” he said.

Photographs showed workers clearing landslips on roads that wind through Wellington’s hilly urban terrain. During the worst of the weekend’s rain, the Mt Victoria tunnel – a key arterial link in the city – was closed.

Weather warnings have been downgraded but a state of emergency remains for the Wellington region.