BRICKS FILL STREETS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 5 February 1931, Page 2

BRICKS FILL STREETS

CONFUSION AT HASTINGS LITTLE WATER FOR FIRES “Hastings as a business town is completely wrecked,, and, from what I heard before. I came down, Napier is the same. Most of the main street seemed to have collapsed like a pack of cards. lien I got out on the street alter the ’quake tlie whole town was just one big fog of dust. Bricks were piled up on the street as if half-a-dozen chimney.-stacks had oome down at once. Half the people had blood on them quid everyone was completely dazed. There was indescribable confusion —screams, shouts, the crash of falling bricks and other material—andi to crown it all fire started.”

1 his was. how Mr. G. H. Shepherdson, of Hataitai, Wellington, described to “The Dominion” the scene at Hastings after the earthquake. Mr. Shepherd'son was having morning tea at Hastings when the disaster .happened and he left the town about an hour after for Wellington. “By a lucky chance,” he said last evening, “a. friend and myself altered oar usual pllace- f or morning tea and went to a quiet little shop where we could chat undisturbed—we usually go to a two-story building in the main street which looked as though it had been hit by a shell when I saw it last. t\ e were in this shop when the ’quake came, and at first we wondered what the dickens was happening—everything seemed to be moving. My friend dashed out into the street saying ‘This is no good to me; I’m getting out,’ and I aliped under the table,, thinking that if anything was going to fall it would have to break the table top before it broke me.

BRICES PILED HIGH IN STREETS,

“Then I went out on the street. Eye ryone was dazed; and shocked. Women wore 'screaming and bricks and stones were piled up high on the street. Numbers of cars were complletely buried—the whole street seemed to have just collapsed inwards, and it was hard to recognise that there was a street there at all. I went -down to my friend’s shop, and on the way saw two people lying on the road, with others attending to them. I think they were dead.

“One man had a cut on liis foot two inches deep and another had blood streaming down his face—he hadl been hit by a falling brick. Half the people I saw had blood on them. Bricks had fallen and were falling everywhere. And then fire started.”

The Grand Hotel cdllapsed like a pack of cards Mr. Shepherd son said. Its front was completely put and! across the street. One man was killed in a car by the fall and further down the street there were five or six oars absolutely covered. Mr. Boss, senr., Mr. Shepherdson thought, had been buried in the fall at the hotel and some of tho staff had! been caught and buried in the bricks.

The fire brigade was a long time in coming out and when it did the men were dressed anyhow and the reel was far behind, being pulled along by a motor lorry. Apparently the station had suffered!, too. The first fire to start was in a. chemist’s shop alongside the Grand! Hotel, and then the Aard office and several shops nearby caught alight and were soon blazing. Air. Shepherdson was told that the water was cut off because the mains were broken, and he noticed only a trickle coming out of the hose at the reel. MASS OF FLAMES. Then Roach’s drapery store caught alight, and! in a few minutes was a mass of flames. Here, too, some men were buried by falling bricks —the shops seemed to be completely flattened out.

“There is not a chimney nor a brick building left standing in Hastings,” Air Shepherdson said. “In fact, I don’t think there is a chimney left for miles around. On the wav down toward Waipawa and Wtiipukurau. 'people were camping in their gardens. Water tanks were rolled over.”

Air. Shepherdson said lie had! met a man in Hastings who said lie had just come through' from Napier.' The rotunda had fallen down in a heap. The Masonic Hotel had partly collapsed. “This man had been hit by a falling brick and was badly hurt,” Air. Sheplierdson said. “He reported that the Ala sonic Hotel was on fire and from what I could gather Napier’s condition seemed to be just a<* bad as, if not worse, than Hastings’.” At the McLeod warehouse in Hastings the whole of the front had fa.ilen out and one looked right in at the groceries inside. Here, also, a number of cars had been buried by falling debris and a number of motorists bad been either killed or badly liurt. The Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ building, a® far as Air. Shepherdson could see, had been undamaged, hut be was certain that there was not a, brick building in the whole town that had escaped.

“After the first excitement was over the people were very calm—they were absolutely wenderfui,” Air. Sheplierdison said. “They got clown to work on the jump and did everything they could to rescue people who had been trapped —and there were many of them—and to give attention to people who had been hurt by falling bricks.” FCXST OFFICE TOWER DOWN.

The Hastings Post Office tower collapsed, he continued, but the roof looked all right with the exception that about 60 feet of coping; had come down on the street and lay along the footpath as though someone had picked it up and laid it down in an unbroken line. The telephone wires at the back of the post office were all broken and twisted in all directions, and the exchange building seemed to have suffered more damage. Mr. Shepherdson understood that the staff had got out safely. “Anyone motoring through to Napier shoufjd take his own provisions, and be prepared l to sleep in the car,” Mr. SheplierdisPh said. “There are no hotels left in Hastings and apparently the position is the same in Napier. They

should keep a look-out for fissures and cracks in the road—we struck several, and there was one particularly bad one south of Pakipaki. about nine inches to a foot deep. At the Sanatorium _A._. Hill at Pukeora there is a collapse of earth on the big bend at the bottom of the hill, and about two chains of fencing, are over.” Air. Shepherdson said! this experience had convinced him that brick buildings, should on no account be bui’lt in New Zealand. As far as he could see the wooden buildings and those in ferroconcrete had withstood the shock fairly well, but buildings in brick had suffered severely. “I was told! by a man in Danhevirke who had been at Hastings when the ’quake came that the one at .Westport two years ago was nothing to it at all,” Mr. Shepherdson said.