Stress apparent after ’quake

Press, 9 March 1987, Page 1

Stress apparent after ’quake

Special correspondent

People have been found hiding in sheds and under cars in Edgecumbe five days after the big earthquake on March 2. A number of children in the town do not want to live there any more, and many adults have withdrawn totally from verbal communication. Mr Brian Trappitt, the director of the Social Welfare Department in Whakatane, said last evening that the devastation and upsets to lives in Edgecumbe were now apparently extensive. He said some amazing earthquake stories were circulating, a number of which were “quite incredible.” Stress was manifesting itself in a whole host of ways and could be expected to get worse. “Even now, we are still only in the impact phase,” he said. “The recovery phase hasn’t really started.”

Children were bringing additional stress to homes where parents were desperately trying to pick up

the threads of life. Mr Trappit said some children were now afraid to be separated at any times from their parents. Others had. a great fear of their homes or of places they had been when the earthquake struck. “Much of New Zealand might think that Edgecumbe is back to normal and it is all over,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth." In an earthquake like that in Edgecumbe, lives were turned upside down in a split second. Mr Trappitt said the fabric of society in New Zealand today was different from what it had been in Napier in 1931 when the big earthquake had struck a populated part of New Zealand. Responses had to be found to help Edgecumbe heal itself. A team of psychologists from Auckland, Hamilton, and Rotorua spent the week-end with Mr Trappitt in Whakatane preparing a briefing that he will give the Minister of Social Welfare, Mrs Kerens, in Rotorua today. '■