AFTERMATH OF QUAKE

Taranaki Daily News, 7 February 1931, Page 9

AFTERMATH OF QUAKE

GLEANINGS FROM THE CHAOS MANY ACTS OF HEROISM. STRANGE ESCAPES FROM DEATH. During the chaos that followed the first great catastrophe at Napier and Hastings there were innumerable acts of the most splendid heroism and some remarkable escapes from death. While the maimed and wounded were crowding the temporary hospitals to overflowing and the few doctors and nurses available were vainly striving to cope with the overwhelming demand on their services, one doctor was in the midst of operating when word was brought to him that his little daughter was missing and believed to have been caught by falling debris. Frantically the doctor gazed at the long queue of maimed. and suffering people awaiting his attention; grimly, ho thought of his missing child. The facts were weighed, and with a stoic shrug of hiS -shoulders the doctor turned once more to his operating table. This is but one of the many marvellous acts of heroism and fortitude by members of the medical and nursing professions. Marvellous escapes from death were unending in their number and their variety. At Hastings Mrs. Holderness and her daughter wore sitting down to morning tea at Roach’s when they heard the ’quake. They rushed for the stairs and half-way down the whole building fell'like a pack of cards. Mrs. Holderness was thrown forward, but the beams formed an arch above her and they climbed out with only slight cuts. A young man working in Roach’s emporium in Hastings had a miraculous escape. When the first terrifying crash came he dived under the counter. The counter cracked under the strain of the terrific weight of debris, but the floor also burst open. The young man disappeared through the crack and wormed his way along to the edge of the building, then out of it, unscathed. A porter at the Grand Hotel in Napier was on an upper floor. The ’quake tossed the whole building into the street, and the porter with it, but he escaped with minor injuries. The thing that struck one most about the people in Napier was that although many of them had lost everything but life "itself, there were very few glum faces. Directions were given and orders obeyed cheerfully and with the utmost goodwill. • Wireless did yeoman service in conveying messages" during the early hours of’disaster, but at the same time it was not altogether reliable. Misleading facts were frequently broadcast, and on one occasion wireless had.a' disastrous effect. About mid-day on Wednesday a message was received over the air that'another serious earthquake was expected any minute. The announcement had a disastrous effect on the Htiwke’s Bay people, All reconstruction and relief work was abandoned at once. Men came tumbling down off roofs and ladders, ahd practically all rescue work was temporarily suspended. It was a cruel rumour that harassed to the utmost the already frayed nerves of the people' and plunged some of them into a. fresh paroxysm of terrdr. . '

One fact in building construction. was 1 very emphatically demonstrated. It was to the effect that whereas wooden buildings almost invariably suffer little structural damage from quakes, and reinforced concrete comes out of the ordeal with flying colours, brick buildings are absolute death traps in earthquakes. Easily the greater part of the appalling death roll, in .the afflicted area was caused by the collapse of brick buildings. A vital problem that is going to cause the utmost concern is how to ad-, just such financial mechanism as mortgages oi* deposits in the banking institutes of the town, assuming that in the former case- the mortgage certificates have been destroyed by fire and that, in the latter case the records of the bank and bundles of notes have been lost or destroyed. Is tho farmer going to say to his' mortgagee: “The deeds are gone. I am a free and independent man?” Glare all these matters to be solved by resort to arbitration? In cases where the records of- a 'banking institution have been destroyed arid private pass- books aro lost or missing, how is the amount of debit orcredit to be determined, for although it is tho practice with most banks to advise the head office at WeL lingtoh periodically as to the extent of A client’s debit, credits are not so advised.