QUAKE-STRICKEN AREA

Taranaki Daily News, 8 July 1929, Page 7

QUAKE-STRICKEN AREA

TDRRIFIC STRAIN ON BRIDGES.

ADDRESS BY MR. FURKERT.

An account of his recent visit of inspection to the area affected by the recent earthquake was given by Mr. F. W. Furkert, Chief Engineer of the Public Works Department, in an address at a Wellington Rotary Club luncheon. Mr. Furkert explained that he proceeded to Murchison via Picton and did not meet with any visible signs of the upheaval until he got to Hope Saddle on his way down the West Coast from Nelson. Here the roads were honeycombed with cracks. There were literally tens of thousands of cracks visible, and these cracks were by no means confined to the roads, but were also visible in the fields. ■ It was a weird experience to stand in a region which appeared to have been shattered, and it took some courage to motor over the roads, as one could not tell how deep the cracks were.

At Woodhen Bend they came upon a big slip on the road, at which the foreman told him they had been working night and day without having made any appreciable impression. It was very interesting, Mr. Furkert said, to notice the way in which the bridges had been affected. It appeared as if all made ground had shaken independently of the solid earth. “Murchison presented a dismal sight,” he continued. “Both hotels were closed, which struck me as extraordinary, as one of them (Ross’s) was quite undamaged. The Murchison bridge, which was of steel and hardwood, had been damaged in many ways. Four Sin bolts had been sheered off, which must have taken a force of a least fifteen tons. On the next span the running planks had been turned completely upside down and lay with the spikes pointing to the sky. The abutment on the far side was found absolutely uninjured, but, to give some idea of the forces which must have been at work, "we found that four square inches of steel had been broken and the tension rods had been broken and buckled. The motion of the 100-ton pier must have been at least six inches to have caused the damage we found.”

DESERTED HOMES. As they proceeded south, the roads were quite impassable, and he soon discovered why the refugees met with were not taking any household goods out with them. The deserted homes were found just as their owners had hurriedly abandoned them. Washing was still hanging on the line, and in many cases the fleeing householders had not even stopped to close doors or windows, or even to put out their fires. Some amusing sights were witnessed. In one case, he came upon three ladies’ bicycles, which had been tethered to a stump by a leg-rope. In the houses, they found that many of the large "pictures had been turned with their faces to the wall. Mr. Furkert and his companion attempted to get through to Newton Flat, but had to abandon the attempt owing to the shattered state of the road. They made their way back to White’s deserted homestead, which was leaning at a drunken angle, and camped the night in a shed. There was plenty of wood in the house, and after enjoying a stew they attempted to get some sleep. This was altogether impossible, however, on account of the numerous shocks which occurred. “I do not desire to boast,” said Mr. Furkert, “but I can honestly say that neither my companion nor myself were afraid of the shakes. I do admit, however, that I was afraid of having to crawl through the tangled mass of fallen timber and undergrowth which blocked the roads in numerous places. We knew that if rain came on these slips were liable to go crashing down the hillsides. We were not'Hnduly alarmed, but I can-

tell you that the night we spent in the shed at White’s homestead reminded us very much of travelling over the Spiral in the Limited express. A particularly heavy shake came at 2.15 in the morning. It was just as if a giant had seized hold of the shed, and oscillated it violently. BOOMING NOISES.

“One of the weirdest experiences of all,” proceeded Mr. Furkert, “was the alarming booming noises, which were heard frequently. These were of two distinct kinds. One lot sounded very much as if a ton or two of explosives had been fired well underground. One at 2 a.m. appeared to be directly underneath us, while others seemed to come from miles away. On studying the map later, I discovered that these booming noises came from one of the big faults marked on the earthquake map. To give you some idea of the size of the landslides which occurred, it was just as if the earth from the wireless station had slipped to the sea. Some of the landslides in the Buller Gorge were a mile and a half in extent. “The Government has been criticised for not getting off the mark after the earthquake,” concluded Mr. Furkert, “but I can tell you that within an hour and a half of the first shock the district engineer had 100 men at work in Murchison clearing slips from the roads, and the next day had 409 men on relief work. The day after the earthquake it was possible to get people away from the stricken area.”,