Civil Defence sends extra resources into Edgecumbe-Te Teko

Press, 5 March 1987, Page 4

Civil Defence sends extra resources into Edgecumbe-Te Teko

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RIC STEVENS,

NZPA staff correspondent

Civil Defence officers in Bay of Plenty swung extra resources into the Edgecumbe-Te Teko area yesterday, to tackle the worst damage done by Monday’s earthquake. Whakatane's deputy Civil Defence co-ordina-tor, Mr Brian Guy, said that Edgecumbe had been more severely hit than first thought. "Unfortunately the damage is far greater than was first thought,” he said. “There is quite serious building damage, road damage, and footpath damage in the Edgecumbe area.”

The battered town of 2000 residents was still without water and its power and sewerage were still disrupted but Civil Defence personnel have set up a local headquarters to tackle the problems at first hand.

Both Edgecumbe and the tiny township of Te Teko, eight kilometres to the south-west, have been without water, power and sewerage since Monday afternoon. The smell from unflushed toilets, im-

promptu latrines and rotting food is strong — and some residents preferred to stay either at the Rautahi marae near Onepu or at the Civil Defence centre at Edgecumbe. Soldiers have delivered water in jerrycans to outlying houses, while tankers provided drinking water in the town centres. The Commander of firemen in the region, Mr George Roberts, of Hamilton, said from Rotorua that his men had worked until darkness on Tuesday but took a break overnight except for emergency calls. Many of the men from the all-volunteer Edgecumbe brigade had not been able to sleep since the earthquake, and it was important they tackle the clean-up yesterday refreshed.

Mr Roberts said firemen — both volunteer and permanent — at Kawerau and Edgecumbe had handled more than 300 calls in 30 hours and weather-proofed 70 houses with tarpaulins. In addition, 40 specialists in dealing with chemical spillages, firemen

from Hamilton and Auckland, had been dealing with two chemical spillages at the Edgecumbe dairy factory. While the multitude of chemicals was not especially dangerous, they included caustic soda, and each drum had to to be recovered, identified and dealt with. The factory’s chief executive, Mr Warren Larsen, said the chemicals at the factory included caustic soda, nitric acid, sulphuric acid and ammonia.

The damage in Edgecumbe was particularly severe as the shocks were big enough to topple a locomotive and bring down 200,000-litre distillery tanks near the factory. Two sheep in the grounds of the New Zealand Distillery Company were yesterday grazing contentedly on land saturated with vodka and gin. Many houses have been knocked off their pilings, shop fronts shattered, and roads and bridge approaches slumped. Mr Guy said a separate emergency control centre had been set up at Edgecumbe and 20 Civil Defence staff as well as

40 soldiers and extra police were to do repair work yesterday.

Elsewhere in eastern Bay of Plenty, things were slowly returning to normal yesterday with facilities being brought back on and roads reopened, although the Te Teko bridge — dislodged from its foundations — is still closed to all but emergency traffic. Mr Guy said there was no suggestion of a lifting of the state of emergency in eastern Bay of Plenty at this stage, although a mid-morning conference was expected to review the situation.

About 35 people were reported injured after the earthquake and an Edgecumbe woman was found to be dead on arrival at Whakatane hospital on Monday after a possibly unrelated cardiac arrest. Members of a school party earlier unaccounted for while tramping in the Urewera Ranges were found safe and well on Tuesday. Schools in the Whakatane and Kawerau regions stayed closed yesterday.