LOST LAND RECORDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20793, 9 February 1931, Page 15

LOST LAND RECORDS.

MOMENTOUS PROBLEM. RECREATING A REGISTER. THE PROBABLE PROCEDURE. Tlio destruction of the Lands and Deeds Registration Office at Napier opens up a momentous problem for the owners of land in Hawke's Bay and tlicir mortgagee creditors, seeing that, with the simultaneous overwhelming of the law offices it sweeps away the - ordinary evidence of title.

It can be taken as a fact that all property in the provincial district has been brought under the Land Transfer Act, as distinguished from the old-style system of title by conveyance. It was one of the first districts in the Dominion in which the work necessitated by the Land Transfer Compulsory Registration of Titles Act was carried out, and that work had been actually finished. Under the Land Transfer system, as applied in New Zealand, the evidence of a title is the entry on a page of the bound volumes kept in the district registration offices, and a duplicate of the page issued to the owner. Unless there has been a miraculous protection of the bound office registers from the fire, by the mass of debris thrown down upon them by the earthquake, they are lost irretrievably. Similarly, the owners' duplicates will have been in most cases in the legal possession of their mortgagees, and kept in the strongrooms or safes of their solicitors. As the earthquake occurred in business hours, the occupants of law offices, Government offices, and other places rushed in alarm into the streets, leaving the doors of strong-rooms and safes open; and before they could return the fire had swept down and invaded the places of custody, destroying their contents.

Thus it appears that both the official and private copies are, in the majority of cases, reduced to ashes, and no evidence of title remains. All land transfer records are kept in the offices of the district to, which they belong—no copy or record is kept at the central departmental office in Wellington. The question arises as to how, in the absence of the document conferring it, title can now bo proved. A high authority on such matters in Auckland stated on Saturday that in the case of total destruction of records and duplicates, the first essential appears to be the re-opening of the registration office and the acceptance for registration of all transactions submitted in the way of transfers, leases and mortgages, and from these the building up the beginnings of a new register.

Then in regard to doubtful claims to registration there will probably have to be set up a small expert tribunal, presided over by, say, a judge or ex-judge, with the powers of a commission, to take evidence as to the riphts asserted. Eventually, legislation may be required to validate what is done in the matter, and in the time to come there may have to be a system of further surveys.

DISTURBANCE OF LEVELS.

EFFECT ON RIVER OUTFALLS.

SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES FEARED

[BY TELEGRAPH.—.SPECIAL REPORTER.] NAPIER, Sunday.

A phenomenon not unexpected in the low-lying areas of Napier has been the rising of mud, sand and water through the dry surface. The opening cracks apparently have lapped artesian water, which has bubbled up between Napier and Hastings. Depressions in grass and lucerne paddocks are now covered with water two or three inches deep. In one case ricks of lucerne, hay are standing in this water. On the beach, an artesian bore, which started to flow in 1897 and has since been reduced to a trickle, is again flowing strongly, but such effects of the earthquake are trifling in view of what is regarded bv engineers as the very serious position of the river outfalls. No precise particulars are available at the moment, but it will be clear to everyone who knows how small a fall to the sea had the rivers of the plain, that the disturbance of the levels may have very serious consequences, apart from the added danger of flood through tlie cracking of the stop-banks. A conference on the subject among tho local authorities and the Government departments concerned is to bo held to-mor-row. Possibly the fate of the port, in addition to problems of drainage and flood prevention, is involved.