HEAVY RAIN AT WHAKATANE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29220, 2 June 1960, Page 16

HEAVY RAIN AT WHAKATANE

Flood Threat Remains (New Zealand Press Association) WHAKATANE, June 1. Electricity was restored in Whakatane at 12.24 p,m, today. 18 hours after a tree in the flooding Whakatane river bad brought down the 22,000-volt borough supply line, causing a general blackout in the borough. Gangs of workers battled throughout the night, in heavy rain, to divert the power line across the river bridge. This required the erection of 45 poles at three-chain intervals. Bakers lost their dough for 5000 loaves, and small supplies of bread came into Whakatane from Te Teko. Kawerau, and Opotikl. At 2 a.m. today a tractor was used to drive the town’s sewerage pumps. Ice-cream in retail shops softened, but most of the stock was rescued by the manufacturing companies. One ice-cream store lost £lOO worth of stock because its freezer had been defrosted an hour before the black out started. Engineers at the Mgtahina hydro-electric dam project in the Rangitaikl river feared that the recently constructed 300 ft causeway might collapse under the pressure of the watfr. If that happens, work will be set back, tor about a month. Outside the borough and at Taneatua and Thornton low-lying paddocks were flooded, and one Awakeri farmer estimated the damage to his maize crop at £l5OO. There was no flooding in the borough apart from at the bridge approaches at midnight on Tuesday. Rain ceased for an hour this afternoon, but heavier falls were forecast for the evening, and there is a prospect of flooding in the town at midnight tonight.