DRAMATIC ESCAPE

Northern Advocate, 3 February 1936, Page 6

DRAMATIC ESCAPE

COOKHOUSE ROOF TO TREE VEHICLES DISAPPEAR IN FLOOD

[Special to “Northern Advocate.”] KAIKOHE, This Day. , The lives of eight employees of the Empire Tung Oil Company’s plantation at Waitangi were threatened last night.

They were sleeping on the floor of the cookhouse, when they were awakened by water lapping round their feet. The men made a hurried getaway to the roof-top, where they held on precariously, until the building itself began to move forward on the bosom of the torrent. The next move of the beseiged party was into the boughs of a tree providentially overhanging the cookhouse, which, a moment later, was carried away on the flood. The water had risen between seven and eight feet in 20 minutes." But, with the fall of the tide, subsided as quickly. The men, with nothing left but their pyjamas, wore refitted at the Paihia store.

The garage of the plantation manager, Mr Patton, was demolished and with it were carried away his motor car and a motor cycle.

So high did the flood waters rise, that at the Waitangi Falls, where there is usually a drop of 20 feet, the stream ran in a level flow at high tide.