HAWKE’S BAY DEATH ROLL

Taranaki Daily News, 26 February 1931, Page 5

HAWKE’S BAY DEATH ROLL

KNOWN TOTAL UP TO 27g. IDENTIFICATION DIFFICULLTIES. The earthquake death-roll for Napier and Hastings and the immediate vicinity on Tuesday evening stood at 279. This total includes only bodies or incinerated remains actually recovered, and takes no account of persons reported as missing. Of the whole number of dead, 28 at Napier and five at Hastings have not been identified. Some of the charred remains are still held for identification, and others have been buried for lack of any evidence by which identity could Oc established.

The death-roll is made up as follows: —Napier, 147; Hastings, 100; Parke Island Old People’s Home, 15; Greenmeadows seminary, 9; Greenmeadows, 4; Taradale, 4.

The police, states the special reporter of the New Zealand Herald, have had some strange problems to solve in identifying burned remains, and the amount of trouble they have taken is extraordinary. In many instances all that the searchers first discovered was a thin layer of small pieces of bone, sometimes no more than would fill an handkerchie, with no piece mote than an inch and ahalf long. Such remains had probably been consumed in the original fire and the bones had been further disintegrated by baking under tons of red hot bricks for more than a week. EVIDENCE FROM ARTICLES. In such cases the routine was to pass all the ashes below through a sieve in the hope of finding jewellery or other objects of metal which the deceased might have worn or carried. Often the evidence of such articles as watch chains, pendants or pocket knives, added to other information in the hands of the police; Was sufficient to enable the remains to be- identified beyond any doubt whatever. One man’s death was established completely by a discoloured gold signet ring bearing a family crest. Remains found on Tuesday had associated with them abundant evidence that the deceased was a Woman. There was a small brooch, the metal top of a handbag, a bunch of keys, a crochet hook, a manicure file, a pair of scissors, two heel plates and a collection of hairpins. The pins arid the heel plates, which were large, suggested to the police that the woman was of middle age. By washing in water a fragment of charred material, they established the fact that it was from her thin summer dress, and that it bore a pattern of little tulips. This. and the brooch, they hope, will lead to identification. i SOME CURIOUS DISCOVERIES.

Sometimes, however, no metal articles whatever could be found* or again, the sieving yielded only things in common use from which nothing could be deduced. Efforts were always made to check the identification by afi export scrutiny of the bones to .see whether they were male or female, and this could often be done with reasonable certainty. In searching the ruins some curious finds have been made. On a doctor 8 premises some bones were found, and it was remarked that they were nearly pure white, with no trace of charring. The mystery was solved when two small hoi. •. were discovered running through a spinal vertebra. ■ These snowed that the bones belonged to a mounted skeleton, a deduction afterwards Confirmed by the doctor. On another qccasion, while searching a site for the remains of a man and a woman, the police found two sets of charred remains. The search was continued, however, and the diggers reached the sand on which the building stood. About this level two more Collections of bones were found. They were not blackened, but brown in colour. The police have an open mind oii the matter, but they think it very probable that they were remains of old-time Maoris btiried among the sandhills long before Napier came into existence.