DAMAGE IN CITY AND SUBURBS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 68, 13 December 1939, Page 11

DAMAGE IN CITY AND SUBURBS

More Slips Expected

SOAKED EARTH MAY CAUSE TROUBLE

“As a rule it is not during the rain that worse slips occur," said an officer of the Wellington city engineer’s department yesteiday. “'.[’he chances are that there will he more slips tonight, when the water has soaked into the earth. That has been our experience in the past. After such a heavy rainfall theie is bound to be some more trouble. On the whole, however. Wellington has been lucky up to the present.”

With the subsidence of the storm yesterday a review of damage iu the city and suburbs was made. iu Wilton Road the ground ban slipped away in front of a house, am* spread half-way across the road. The slip does not. block the road for traffic, and it will not take long to clear the debris away, but something may have to be done to make the house concerned more secure. There were two slips in Hill Street. Toward Tinakori Road, on the northern side of the street, a bank, which for many years had been held up by an old timber breastwork, came down. This structure had lost a good deal of its original strength, and the waterlogged ground behind simply pushed it outward. The slip should be cleared up by the end of the week. There were many other slips. Among these were earth falls in Mana street. Laura Avenue, Mornington Road, Mills Road and Dorking Road, iu the Brooklyn-Mornington district. There were minor slips on the new Ngahauranga Gorge Road, and on Onslow Road, Lucknow Terrace, Rangiora Road, Homebush Road, and Cockayne Road, in the Khandallah district. „ „ , Karori suffered worst from the flood, but there the position began to right itself as soon as the rain ceased to fall heavily early yesterday morning. There was a further subsidence in Birdwood Road, at the head of the Chaytor Street tip. This made-up road has been subsiding gradually ever since it was constructed, but the irregularities in the surface are now such that drivers of cars over it should take care. < Tbfe rain did a good deal ol damage to private property throughout the city. One of the worst instances was the slip which occurred in front of the hillside residence of Mr. W. H. Baldwin, Laura Avenue, Brooklyn. This six-roomed wooden house was erected about 150 feet above Laura Avenue, on a fairly steep hillside. From lhe bend in Laura Avenue a zig-zag path had been made up to the dwelling, the area on either side having been laid out in grossly banks and shrubs. During the rain on Monday, the ground immediately in front of the house, extending about 60 feet downward, slipped away, baring some of the piles of the house. The slip left the house on the edge of a steep face of water-logged mullock, out of which a small torrent of water was rushing yesterday morning. All the service pipes to the houste were exposed, and workmen were making disconnexions till the ground is put in order again. In the meantime Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin have had to seek a home elsewhere. A few yards further up the same street, another fall occurred' from a high roadside bank, but this consisted of only half a dozen yards of earth. A small house, built high up from the road on the northern side of Mahina Bay, is said to have been shifted some feet from its original site by a movement of the earth. In Day’s Bay, Moaua Road and Ferry Road were transformed into raging torrents, each of which hurled itself across the main road at the bottom of the hill, as the drains could not take the flood waters.

An inquiry was made yesterday as to how the new motor camp had fared. The city engineer’s department reported that no damage had occurred. There were still some tenants yesterday morning who had been able to “stick it out” during the storm, and there were no complaints.

The beautiful roses in the Botanical Gardens appeared to suffer more than the other flowers and shrubs as the result of the heavy rain and the wind, which increased in violence in the early hours of yesterday morning. The rose beds were covered with sodden petals and most of the blooms which were not blown from their stems showed the effects of the buffeting they had received. The level of the water in the swans’ pond had returned to normal yesterday afternoon and the birds appeared unharmed by the storm, but their abode had been so silted up by flood waters that three men with shovels were required to bring it back to its usual condition.