TERRIFYING DAYS

Evening Post, Volume 137, Issue CXI, 10 June 1926, Page 8

TERRIFYING DAYS

EARTHQUAKES IN SOLOMONS

ISLAND ROCKED AND SHAKEN

A CONTINUED VISITATION,

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

A report on the recent earthquakes in the Solomon Islands has come from the general secretary of the Melanesian Mission, Major H. S. Robinson, who is at present visiting these Pacific islands. The writer of the roport ia the Rev. Dr. Fox, of the mission station at Pawa on the. island of Ugi. Dr. Pox states:— "The earthquake started on Monday, 12th April, and continued for ten days. During the first seven days there were 35 brief shocks and many tremors, but none were so terrible as the first one. "The awful violence of that fifteen seconds is beyond words. I was thrown clean out. It was a dark night and raining. There was a great roaring, and the houses danced like Dervishes. A nut tree on the top of the MIT was thrown to the bottom, and my house was instantly in flames. All the tanks, which were brimful of water, were thrown to the ground and completely smashed. The back verandah collapsed to matchwood and the side of the baelt room was wrenched out. In the hospital four boys were on beds, and they were all thrown to the middle of the room, and' there met the medicine cupboard. Everything breakable broke. Then came quiet, and we put out the fire in my house with wet sacks. GREAT SHAKES WITH A BOAR. "All night the island quivered, and earthquakes -came every three or four minutes until 2 a.m. on Tuesday after which they came at longer intervals, and so till Thursday, at 7.30, when the next big one arrived. Big shakes came every half-hour with a roar. You could see the hills swinging as you swing your arm, and could hear the hillsides falling. Great fissures opened everywhere. Some of the boys vomited. One house turned over at an angle of 45 degrees. "In some of the houses the main posts were wrenched out. A fissure opened across the floor of Mr. George's house. Some' of the fissures are fifty yards long. Eissuers also opened oh the reef of both side sof the Point. Many of the native houses and the stone church at Tawarodo fell."