TIDAL WAVE AND HURRICANE IN TAHITI.

Evening Star, Issue 12761, 14 March 1906, Page 4

TIDAL WAVE AND HURRICANE IN TAHITI.

LOSS OF LIFE AND PROPERTY. AUCKLAND, March 14. The Taviuni, which arrived from the Islands this morning, brings particulars of the hurricane and tidal wave at the Society and Pauinotu Islands. The first indications at Tahiti were a falling barometer on the 6th, followed by increasing Htoady seas on the evening of the 7th breaking' over the foreshore road. At midnight the houses on the coral strand had to be evacuated, amid the great confusion of screaming women. The residents, with the plucky assistance of the natives, made for the higher ground. About seven o'clock on the morning of'the Bth the seas reached their maximum height, and houses that had withstood the earlier assaults were washed over entirely or broken piecemeal. The subsiding sea was followed by a sudden cyclone at eight o'clock, which levelled trees in the park like a firing party. It lasted but a few minutes, with a "return ten minutes liter. By noon the cyclone had passed. The only white casualty reported was the drowning of Leboloch," caretaker of a email island in the harbor. Papeete' itself suffered to the extent of £120,000, and the whole island to the extent oi £IBO,OOO. Three schooners ore believed to have been lost at sea during the cyclone. Reports brought by the warship Zelee from Paumotu, in tie Low Archipelago, show that it suffered much more severely. The small islands of Vaero and Hikueru are said to have disappeared. Seas swept right over many of the islands, the natives taking refuge in cocoanut trees and oa schooners. At Taaote six lives were lost, including Father Paul, a Catholic missionary, -who, after holding out for some hours on a tree, fell into the waves and was drowned. Ninety-five persons were drowned at Anaat Island, where die once beautiful district of Tuiraire was reduced to a bare coral strand. At Motutonga. where six deaths are reported, two native divers ar« said to have saved their lives by swinnning for twelve hours in the lagoon and diving under tfa« big waves. It will be some time before the full extent of the damage at Paumotu is known.