THE EARTHQUAKE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 156, 20 March 1923, Page 8

THE EARTHQUAKE

1 A LOCAL AFFAIR DAMAGE REMARKABLY SLIGHT It is rattier remarkable that the sharp earthquake on Sunday night did not do more damage. Ton feet of an unstayed brick wall, thirty feet in height—the remains of one of the buildings that are being demolished to make, way for the now theatre at the foot of Majoribanks street —lost not a single brick, and a naked chimney-stack, at least thirtytwo feet In height, did not suffer from the shock. The slim reinforced concrete chimneystack on the Bryant and May, Bell and Co.’s site in Tory Street also escaped damage. The earthquake appears to have been confined to a fairly small area.

Nothing but minor damage is reported. A plate-glass window (in a steel frame) in, the new Maritime Building, Waterloo Quay, was cracked and splintered by the squeezing of tho frame. J shed in Waterloo Quay, and tlie new Thorndon shed of the Wellington Harbour Board developed cracks in the brick-work panels, but r> the cracks aro not likely to affect the stability of tho building unless further heavy shocks occur. At tho Wellington Public Library, erected partly on a “floating foundation” upon reclaimed land, and _ regarded, for that reason, as peculiarly vulnerable to the effects of earthquake —little damage was done. There was, however, 'some evidence of the shake, as about 5 feet of plaster cornice di opped to the floor from the beam which marks the junction of the old building with the new —of the building cn the “float” with tho one on piles. At th? Town Hall. The Town Hall suffered no damage whatever. “Not three-pennyworth of plaster fell,” said the custodian, “yet I was standing at the main cntraice, and saw the pillars of the portico sway backwards and forwards until I thought the place must collapse. People who were standing under it made a wild rush for the *other side of the street. I think that the people inside at the Salvation Army service, and the gespel meeting in the G’oncjrt Chamber, deserve all credit for the way, tlcy behaved. There •rust have been 3000 people in the big hall, and if a rush had started it might have had serious consequences.

Water System Safe. An inquiry was made at the city engineer’s offices os to whether any damage to the water mains had been reported. Mr. Morice, tho engineer in charge of water and drainage, said that no damage had been reported, and that the meter showed a pressure of 1041 b. to tho square inch. Mr. Morice added that a fractured pipe did not always manifest itself ft once, but ho did not anticipate trouble in this instance. He had icceived no report of any kind from the tunnel works at Orongoionga A Mother’s Fright. Exciting moments were experienced by a mother in Tinakori Road, when the chimneys of adjoining- houses crashed on the roofs and the debris rattled clown in a terrifying cascade. Slip and her husband were sitting in a room downstairs, while the baby was asleep upstairs. The chimney from the next house crashed through their upstairs window, leaving a heap of bricks and mortar on the floor. Their own chimney was in the room adjoining the broken window, and it was here that the child was asleep. Tlie roof stood the shock of their own falling bricks, but the location of the upstairs crash was so evidently in the exact neighbourhood of the baby that the mother, paralysed by apprehension, was unable to climb the stairs, and was in an agony of dread until the father brought the child down. A sound roof alone prevented a tragedy. *N The Supremo Court suffered severely upstairs in the shaking down of plaster, several hundredweights of which had to be swept up yesterday morning. The jury room especially suffered in this respect. The Customs office, which had just been replastered, received minor damage. In one of the rooms there are several large cracks on the ceiling. SEISMOGRAPH RECORD THE EARTH “GOING WEST.” A Very good record of tho earthquake was obtained on tho old Milne seismograph at the Kelburn Observatory. Dr. C. E. Adams, Government Seismologist, stated yesterday that tho record obtained on tho Milne machine showed that the earthquake was a local one, and it appeared there were no shakes beyond the concentrated bump. The interesting thing about the shake was that at. the time tho earth took a sharp tilt downwards towards the west. Dr. Adams added that at the Observatory is a new seismograph, which is’ about forty times as sensitive as the Milno machine. So violent. was the shock that it threw the mirror of the new machine out of action, so that nothing beyond tho start of the earthuuake was recorded. It was impossible to say, said Dr. Adams, from which direction the earthquake came. “If we wore thoroughly equipped with sufficient m.n--r-lrnns we could make a. shot at it. but I cannot sav anything about the question of d’rection, because we do not nossess tlm equipment to be able to make a definite statement on the point.” In regard to the earthquake which occurred on Fridav night, Dr. Adams said that, the origin appeared to be about 100 miles away from Wellington, but the direction could not be determined in the absence of sufficent equipment. All ho could /say was th-'t it seemed as if tho centre of the disturbance was on tho circumference of a. circle about 100 miles from Wellington.