ALARM ACT GISBORNE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 106, 7 May 1931, Page 12

ALARM ACT GISBORNE

DAMAGE "TO BUILDINGS

NO ONI I INJURED

(By Telegraph.- -Press Association.)

GIS BORNE, This Day

A severe cnrtlb quake exporienced at Gisborne at 2.2S this morning caused considerable iilarj v, but except for a parapet which a rashed through . the verandah of scve: ra.l business premises in Peel street as d the fracture of a number of shop windows the. structural damage is not v< ity great. No one was injured. ' . ' •

Residents and j juests at hotels and boarding-houses poured into the streets, which, with busin ess people- hurriedly arriving in cars tc> inspect their premises, soon became1 full of people.

Bartlect's Camj > on the Wharerata Hills, twenty milci :i south of Gisborne, reported 32 shoekj-:i between 2.30 a.m. and 7.30 a.m.

A survey of tho damage- shows that the parapet of Hall's buildings in Peel street crashed ov«j r the front of four shops, bringing do >wn . tho verandah, burying the f ootpi ath in a mass of masonry, and shattering tho windows. The pediments of; a number of buildings in Gladstono l oad were broken. In one case a heavy pediment precariously balanced on two ai.de parapets, fell on to a roof, one smashing in the roof of an adjoining fish si lop. Tho stocks and fittings were dania god in a number of shops, but not to a great extent.

Country reports, show that the disturbance was m'or« severe towards the south and south- -west. Te Karaka, twenty miles to ti he north, felt nothing, and in tho na rthern coastal areas the shock was not severe. Nuhaka and Wharerata expend need seventeen tremors in the first li alf hour. Tiniroto, 35 miles to the soa th-west, reports that the shocks were s-s vere until (5 o'clock, when they'cased q ff, but they are- still continuing mildly : every quarter of an hour. Chimneys, thorc are down and tanks burst. Th« > interior of a crockery and general, i itore is in a mess. Waerengaokuri, n< jar Gisborne, reports that whilst chimo neys are down and crockery was brri ken the shock was not exceptionally J feyere.

At the Gisborne Hospital the patients took the shako v cry .calmly. There was no panic, aii d all the nurses reported, immediate! y for duty. Thcro was no structural damage.

A further Tirini ito report states that the residents in tie township spout the night under, a ho( el verandah. They declare that the ti 'lakes were as severe as any previously i 'olt. All the chimneys are down, some • having been rebuilt several times sine« the February earthquake. All the < .rockery was broken, and everything 011 the shelves in the hotel bar was thn iwn down.