AFTER APRIL'S STORM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18773, 29 July 1924, Page 9

AFTER APRIL'S STORM.

THREE MONTHS" ISOLATION.

HINTERLAND OF TARANAKL

WIDESPREAD DAMAGE,

With the reopening a few days ago of the railway service from Stratford to Tahora, for the first time since the railway was covered with slips during the phenomenal storm in April, the towns of Wh<>ngamomona and Tahora, says the Taranaki News, are at last relieved from their three months' isolation. With the idea of estimating the exact extent of the damage done sjod the clearing ,work still to do, Mr. T. M. Ball, resident engineer of the Public Works Department, made an investigation of conditions last week.

After the wash-outs occurred in April about 40 imen were immediately transferred from the public works metal; pit at Te Wera and commenced to clear the slips from the Whangamomona saddle, where the most serious damage had occurred. For three months both Whangamomona and Tahora were isolated, exceupt for pedestrian or horse traffic, although a week after the storm the road was temporarily ideated for vehicular traffic to within a short distance of the Whangaimomona township. Further inland, past Tahora, and especially in the Tangarakau Gorge, the slips were large and extensive.

As it was found impracticable to concentrate a large number of men in one spot on account of the distributed nature of the work, the number working on the main road was gradually reduoed to the 15 at present working, the average number employed since the storm occurred being 20 men. '.Phis number does not include the men employed by the Railway Department in repairing the extensive damage to the line between Pohokura and Whangamomona. Mr. Ball hopes to increase the number to 40, so that the restoration of the road to normal conditions will be comploted in about three months' time.

The extent of the damage in the district beyond Tahora seems almost overwhelming, so huge are the masses of earth that have been swept from the hilltops, and so complete the devastation left in the tracks of the avalanches. At the Tahora station streams of liquid papa, mixed with logs and other debris, had poured down from the spurs into the valley below, but this deposit has now been cleared away. Immediately beyond the township stands the great divide known as the Moki Saddle, which is negotiated by a fairly steep roadway winding with tortuous bends from gullyto spur and from foot to summit. In comparatively few places could the horses move beyond a walk, sinking knee deep in the oozing quagmire which has run from the slopes above on to the road. Overturned barrows at intervals along the road, their wheels choked with clinging masses of r papa mud, and an occasional roadman plying pick and shovel, indicate tho method by which the slips have been cleared. But only on the further side of the saddle, where the storm spent its fiercest violence, .vis its fullest intensity realised. Slope after slope of the spurs has been razed of soil and vegetation as cleanly as if sliced with a huge knife. Nothing remains but tlhe bare' shining faces of blue papa, presenting from a distance the appearance of a grand cathedral with its regular roofs of grey slate. The rushing masses have?, swept clean tho beds 01 the streams, piling themselves up in tangled heaps where any obstruction occurred sufficient to withstand their onslaught. At the foot of the saddle on the Ohura side, where the Moki Road branches off, a sea of mud and logs accumulated on either- side and above the culvert, necessitating a great deal of labour to provide the present narrow track winding among tho gaunt limbs of the trees. A little further on, where the road leads to the Tangarakau Gorge, and the vegetation increases as the cliffs on either side grow more precipitous, the slips increase in number and size. At the Waingarara Stream, where the roadway was previously carried over the ravine by a stout wooden bridge some 30ft. above the level of the water, not a vestige of the bridge remains, savo a few iron bolts set in the concrete foundations in the papa bed. Where the bridge is can only be conjectured, as i'i has not yet been located.