TERRIBLE STORM.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 10473, 31 December 1927, Page 5 (Supplement)

TERRIBLE STORM.

o EAST COAST FLOODED IN '76.

CHOPS RUIN ED ; TRADE PARALYSED.

NATIVES FEAR STARVATION.

In January 1576 unusually heavy rains \isited the East Coast. A report from Napier said that looking irom the Napier hills the country seemed to lie one vast lake. Communication with Menace and Taradale was cut off, and heavy land-slides were experienced. Three houses wen. almost shattered to pieces m Shakespeare Road. Upwards of 70 people laid to lake 1-eiugc at lhe Cathoud 1 .Mission station. in 80-" tv Bay ,he floods created great havoc. Eighteen homesteads, with sheep, cattle, etc., were flooded out. De Mordrey lost half his sheep. One hundred and fifty people sought shelter at the hotels. 'The “Standard'’ said: “A number of settlers are ruined; crops of all kinds have been destroyed; and all commercial transactions have been paralysed.” For eight days it rained incessantly at Tolaga Bay. The roads were all blocked by land-slides and a correspondent said:—-

“The people will be without food this year and they must try and obtain fern-root to cat hut most of it has been destroyed by the sheep. The people, old and young, are loudly lamenting the loss of their crops and dreading the prospects of destitution and starvation which lie before them. Patara, who lias lived at Uawa since 1825, says that never before has he experienced such heavy floods. The potatoes, kumaras, maize, wheat and all other crops have been destroyed; houses also have been swept away. The people have no need to plant their next year’s crops.”

At Annum, so wrote Hului, great land-slips came down from the hills in every direction, in some cases burying, crops and houses. An old man named Nelio in one house and a woman and a child in another were nearly buried. The rush of water and the noise of the falling cliffs so alarmed the people that they began to cry out in dread and. to take leave of each other, believing they would be lost.

At Tokomaru Bay the position was no better. The Rev. Matiaha Paliewa wrote that it rained without intermission from the loth to the 22nd of the month and that dreadful floods ensued. Crops on the low-lying levels wore washed away and those on the hill-sides buried.

‘‘The people,” he said, “will he absolutely without food; what has not been washed away is rotting. They will have to live on fern root and mamaku (fern tree).”