CANTERBURY’S GREAT FLOOD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22593, 24 December 1938, Page 21

CANTERBURY’S GREAT FLOOD

MANY people are still living who remember the “great flood” oj February 4, 1868, in which the Waimakariri overflowed its banks and joined the Avon, so that low-lying parts of Christchurch and its surrounding districts were under water. That event is held up as a warning of the potential danger of the Waimakariri to Christchurch. What is not remembered, however, is that this flood was not merely a Waimakariri flood. Every river in Canterbury from the far north to the far south overflowed its banks. Settlers near Christchurch and the banks of the Waimakariri suffered a tremendous loss of stock, and their homes were ruined, but so did settlers everywhere in Canterbury. Their losses were not lessened by the fact that the floods subsided as quickly as they rose. The cause was a torrential downpour lasting a.day and a night without intermission, accompanying a violent south-easterly storm. It was apparently just such a storm as Christchurch experienced on Friday last, but with the difference that the worst of the downpour lasted five or six times as long. Then also there were few fences, hedges, or plantations to hold back the water. A succinct account of the floods and the damage done is given by Dr. A. C. Barker, the pioneer doctor of Christchurch, in a letter home written on February 15, 1868. “February 4 will long be remembered in New Zealand as the date of one of the most disastrous and tremendous storms I ever remember to have heard of,” he writes. “On that day, for a distance of more than 400 t 1! os i t^ie coast of the Middle island was visited by a deluge of south-east rain, so violent that had it continued for more than a few hours, this side of the island would have been submerged! Cataracts from the Clouds “Low-lying clouds seemed to rise out of the sea and strike the first range of hills, and pour down such cataracts of water that in many parts of the open plain the water was seen rushing along like a wave, hke the bore of the Severn. All : the ram rivers were instantly over- • flowed.” , The first serious news received in 1 Christchurch was that Kaiapoi was i under water. Then, just before 1 communication was broken off, it 1 was learned that all the bridges ] were under water. Christchurch ; fought, as Dr. Barker states, that ] the floods so long predicted by Mr ] £T a v had come at last.” This Mr "• B. Bray was a civil engineer who J c

(SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOB THE PRESS.) [By C. R. STRAUBEL] had so frequently predicted that one day the Waimakariri would come down and flood Christchurch that his name had become a byword. This verse was written about him: “At Avonhead lived Mr Bray Who every morning used to say: T shouldn’t be surprised to-day If Christchurch city were swept away.’ ” The rain began on February 3, and in a few hours after the heaviest downfall there was a sea of water seven miles wide behind Kaiapoi. All fences, sheep, and many cattle and horses were swept away. Farmers’ Great Losses “The majority of the farmers and sheepowners, who had laid down at night in a country covered with luxuriant crops and large flocks of sheep and cattle, found themselves when morning broke hopelessly ruined, and gazing on a scene of desolation impossible to describe,” writes Dr. Barker.- “The loss of life in some places is terrible: houses with all inside swept away.” At Ohape, near the Orari river, where Dr. Barker’s son was farming, the family sat down to dinner at 7 p.m., having noticed that the creek was high, but not so as to be alarming. A quarter of an hour later the servant came rushing in to say that the house was surrounded by water. When they went to the door the water extended as far as they could see on every side, “a mighty, rushing river.” There was no chance of escape but fortunately the house, was built on a rise and remained above water. Fortunately, also, the sheep had been moved during the day to a high shingle ridge and few of them were lost. The flood swept away all the crops, stock, fences, house, and stockyard of a neighbour at Ohape, and the farmer and his family had to swim on horseback for their lives. By the next morning the flood was all gone, leaving nothing but desolation and mud behind it. “In Christchurch the flood was less felt than elsewhere, it having been protected by the Peninsula, which caught the storm on its way from the sea,” says Dr. Barker. “We were not aware until several days afterwards what the real state of the case was, but who ever heard of a waterspout 400 miles in extent? Without exaggerating, the whole sea beach on the east coast of the island is strewed with thousands of sheep and cattle. I fear half the farmers in Canterbury are hopelessly ruined.” Dr. Barker in an earlier letter describes his own ordeal in his house

When Most of the East Coast Was Under Water

by the Avon river, near where the Gas Company’s building now stands. The house was built by a bank, with the kitchen and a bedroom on the lower level, and the living-room and main bedrooms on the top of the bank. The water filled the kitchen, and Dr. Barker watched it rising at the rate of four or five inches an hour up the steps. The next morning the house was almost isolated in a wide lake, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. Then the flood began to go down, and it was not necessary after all to “send for a cab and ship off the children to some friends on drier land.” The Post Office in Market (Victoria) square was surrounded by water.

It was in these conditions that the Pilgrims were getting ready to entertain Lord Lyttelton, who was visiting the settlement in whose formation he had taken an active part as one of the leaders of the Canterbury Association. The first breakfast in his honour was preceded by a slight earthquake shock. Canterbury did not give Lord Lyttelton a very appropriate welcome.