TILES MOVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 141, 16 June 1936, Page 11

TILES MOVE.

STRANGE HAPPENING. UNEXPLAINED PRESSURE. MAGISTRATE'S COURT BLOCK. Believed to have been caused by subsidence, dozens of glazed tiles embedded in the solid concrete floor at the entrance to the Magistrate's Court suddenly commenced to expand at 10.15 this morning. Within half an hour, preceded by a fairly loud cracking noise, many of the tiles, four inches square, began to lift and then overlapped each other and fell back. As he was about to leave by the front door of the Court, a senior police officer was astounded, on looking down at the floor, to see a considerable portion actually creeping towards him. Then one line of tiles began to crack and, rise to such an extent that they prevented the double doors from being] closed. Even when pressure was relieved in this particular line of tiles, other squares commenced to move in a similar manner, forcing themselves upwards. For fully half an hour the cracking and the expansion of the tiles' went on, until so many were displaced that they had to be gathered up. The ornamented borders of tiles on either sides, near the walls later started to crack and move, and even when one stood on these squares they could be felt moving. The untoward happening created a feeling of insecurity and one or two of the interested watchers hurriedly left, fearing that an earthquake was in progress. An , official of the Public Works Department, who was summoned, considered that the expansion was caused by subsidence of some sort, adding that it would take very little movement to cause the tightly set tiles to move as they did. There did not a-ppear to be any movement in the concrete floor on which the tiles were set. ""Neither was there anything beneath the floor itself that could have caused the tiles to move.

The Magistrate's Court building was erected in 1913 and the tiles have been solidly in position, therefore, for 23 years, without any trace of movement until this morning. For some time past pieces of masonry have been falling from the parapet of the building, while large cracks have been noticeable in the plastered surface of the walls, both near the ground and also towards the top. This is considered to be caused by compression on the whole building, which appears to be badly strained. No doubt a thorough inspection of the building will be made by the Public Works engineers and architects.