MOTOR PARTY RESCUED.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 76, 29 March 1920, Page 5

MOTOR PARTY RESCUED.

MANY SETTLERS ISOLATED. GOVERNMENT AID WANTED. (By TelcgrapSi.—rress Association.) PAPAROA, this day. Saturday's Hood was the highest known in the history of this settlement. i'lie damage to roads, bridges, and private property .must • amount to thousands of pounds. «The chief damage in the Paparoa township, the lower portions of which are three feet under water, was at Sutherland's boarding- ! house, Graff's bakery, and the telephone exchange (Wilkins). Fortunately the j Hood water receded in this locality and I caused no loss of life, but serious ilaiu'age to outbuildings and furniture. A I portion of the boarding-house was swept I some distance away, also Graff, stables and Taylor's stables. There was great wreckage also of the temporary homes of the railway workers whose huts were overturned and carried away. Their camps present a scene of desolation. An old wooden bridge in Waipu Gorge was swept away, and only the concrete bridge iB now standing. It is stated that a part}- of motorists in the Gorge was overtaken by the flood. They secured their car to a tree, and were subsequently rescued from the top of the car. Accounts of this are conflicting. Road communication has been severed with Maungaturoto and Waipu.

A special meeting of the Otamatea County Council will be held to-morrow to consider urgent works to relieve isolated centres. Traffic by vehicle with neighbouring districts is blocked, and the state of the roads render it impossible to convey food supplies. Government aid is urgently necessary as local resources cannot cope with pressing relief works.