MUD ERUPTION AT ROTORUA

Southland Times, Issue 24444, 26 May 1941, Page 3

MUD ERUPTION AT ROTORUA

TREMOR AND NOISE (Special) ROTORUA, May 23. Hot mud was thrown to a height of 50ft when a mud geyser erupted at Whakarewarewa early yesterday morning. After playing for two hours it subsided, leaving an area of about four square chains splattered in sticky mud with a crater in the centre. The outbreak was in a vacant section by Guide Georgina’s house at the entrance to the reserve at Whakarewarewa. Residents in the pa and houses surrounding the Geyser Hotel were awakened about 5.30 a.m. by a continued trembling of the ground, accompanied by a sound described as similar to distant gunfire or to the noise of a Diesel engine. This continued for almost an hour. MUD OVER RADIUS OF A CHAIN Many people left their beds to try to discover the source of the disturbance, but it was not until dawn that the mud geyser was seen to be throwing great quantities of grey mud and water high into the air. The force of the eruption decreased, until by the middle of the morning there was not the slightest sign of activity from the crater.

Evidence of the disturbance was seen by a great number of visitors attracted to the scene during the day in the mud which covered the ground and undergrowth thickly for a radius of a chain from the crater. There were also a few splashes of mud on the walls of a building about 100 ft away in which some of the staff of the nearby hotel had been sleeping. The height to which the mud was thrown was indicated by splashes on the topmost branches of a 50ft gum tree close to the centre of the disturbance.