In Māori tradition Rūaumoko, god of earthquakes, caused rumblings and shaking as he walked about, and European arrivals soon experienced the frightening power of the land they hoped to settle. Since 1840 several major quakes have disrupted towns and cities, and caused injury and death. The worst was in Hawke’s Bay in 1931: it claimed 258 lives and altered the landscape forever. But it also led to world-class design and construction standards – and to a better understanding of the hazards facing communities in a geological danger zone.
For centuries before Europeans arrived, Māori had experienced rū whenua, which means ‘the shaking of the land’.
According to Māori tradition, earthquakes are caused by the god Rūaumoko (or Rūamoko), the son of Ranginui (the Sky) and his wife Papatūānuku (the Earth). Rangi had been separated from Papa, and his tears had flooded the land. Their sons resolved to turn their mother face downwards, so that she and Rangi should not constantly see one another’s sorrow and grieve more. When Papatūānuku was turned over, Rūaumoko was still at her breast, and was carried to the world below. To keep him warm there he was given fire. He is the god of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the rumblings that disturb the land are made by him as he walks about.
In Māori tradition some earthquakes were attributed to taniwha, dragon-like monsters. For example, it was said that a taniwha travelled north from Porirua, near Wellington, to Te Aute in Hawke’s Bay, and left a trail of destruction. At Te Aute it battled with the god Tāne, the thrashing of its tail creating a sandbank island in Lake Roto-a-Tara. Although this small lake is now drained, the sandbank remains. The Te Aute area also has two other lakes dammed by earthquakes – Poukawa and Hātuma.
Several accounts of earthquakes experienced by Māori were recorded by European writers. In his book Old Whanganui (1915), T. W. Downes noted that Māori said that earthquakes were less frequent and less violent before Europeans arrived. However, they described two severe earthquakes, at Taupō and Rotorua. It was said that at Rotorua a pā with about 1,000 people was swallowed up, and the area became a lake.
Māori also spoke of two earthquakes along the Whanganui River. In 1838 there were huge falls of earth on both sides of the river, causing a backwash that left canoes stranded high up on the cliffs. The earthquake also caused the earth to open in parallel fissures above the pā at Utapu. The next year a violent agitation took place in the river below the pā, and large masses of rock were lifted up in the riverbed; they later disappeared.
Māori witnessed major changes in the landscape of the Wellington region. In the early 1900s the ethnologist Elsdon Best was told that Wellington’s harbour, Port Nicholson, originally had two entrances. One was the current entrance at Pencarrow, and the other was through the low sandy area now occupied by the suburb of Rongotai and Wellington’s airport. The nearby suburb of Miramar was then an island – Motukairangi.
According to Māori tradition, some 18 generations earlier there was a great earthquake, known as Haowhenua (land swallower or destroyer). Elsdon Best estimated that it had occurred about 1460 AD. The channel between Motukairangi and the mainland became shallow enough to wade, and soon filled with sediment, converting the island to the present-day Miramar Peninsula.
By the time Captain James Cook explored the area in 1773 there was only one harbour entrance. Studies of the sediment in the isthmus indicate that the area was once below sea level, and it has been suggested that uplift might have occurred along a fault through Miramar.
European settlers arriving in the Wellington region from 1840 onward soon became accustomed to a distinctive feature of the new land: the numerous small earthquakes. Because these minor tremors caused no damage, people were ill-prepared for the severity of the quakes that were to follow.
On 16 October 1848 an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.5 shook the region. Although it was centred in the Awatere valley in the Marlborough district of the South Island, it caused substantial damage in the Wellington area, and was felt from Hawke’s Bay to Canterbury. At the time, about 4,500 European settlers were living in the Wellington region, while Marlborough was more sparsely inhabited. Māori settlements were scattered along the coast.
The first earthquake occurred at 1.40 a.m. during a severe gale and heavy rain. The main shock lasted for at least two minutes, and was followed by strong vibrations for 10 minutes. Vibrations continued for at least an hour, increasing to earthquake shocks every few minutes. Judge Henry Chapman noted about 100 aftershocks between 1.40 a.m. and 6 a.m.
In Wellington the violent shaking damaged almost all brick and stone buildings, including many homes, commercial buildings, churches, barracks, the jail, and the colonial hospital. Wooden buildings survived, but many lost their brick chimneys. In Marlborough, a number of homesteads were badly damaged.
Major aftershocks on 17 and 19 October brought down a number of buildings that had been damaged in the first earthquake. Many people in Wellington described these aftershocks as being as strong as or stronger than the initial earthquake.
Lieutenant Governor Edward Eyre described the effects of the 1848 earthquake in alarming terms: ‘the town of Wellington is in ruins … Terror and dismay reign everywhere ... ships now in port … are crowded to excess with colonists abandoning the country’. 1 Angry newspaper editorials blasted Eyre’s catalogue of desolation and gloom, fearing that his descriptions would deter new immigrants and discourage business investment.
As aftershocks continued, some people sought safety at night aboard ships in the harbour. Others decided to leave permanently: on 26 October the barque Subraon set sail for Sydney with over 60 settlers. It struck rocks near the Wellington Harbour entrance and was wrecked, but no lives were lost. Many of the rescued settlers eventually stayed in Wellington.
On the other hand, those living near the earthquake epicentre thought Wellington would be a refuge. After the first few days of frightening tremors, whalers from Cloudy Bay, Marlborough, took their families to Wellington in an open boat, despite stormy weather.
Surprisingly, only three people died in the 1848 tremors. A barrack sergeant and his son and daughter were fatally injured on 17 October, when the brick wall of a damaged building collapsed during a major aftershock.
Soon after the earthquakes, the settlers were clearing ruins and rebuilding. Mindful of the severe damage to brick and masonry buildings, many chose to replace them with wooden buildings.
The 1848 earthquakes, and the aftershocks which continued well into 1849, were caused by movement along at least 105 kilometres of a major fault along the Awatere Valley. Along the fault, land moved as much as 8 metres horizontally. Matthew Richmond, the resident magistrate of Nelson, visited the area in November 1848. An account of his visit noted that ‘a crack quite straight crossed the country for miles; in some places he had difficulty crossing it with his horse; in one place the crack passed through an old warre [whare] dividing it in two pieces standing four feet apart.’ 2
In 1855 a magnitude 8.2 earthquake – the most powerful ever recorded in New Zealand – rocked the southern part of the North Island. Caused by movement along a fault in Palliser Bay, it altered the landscape of the Wellington region and affected its subsequent urban development.
The evening of 23 January 1855 was the end of a two-day holiday, the 15th anniversary of Wellington’s founding. Shortly after 9 p.m. a violent earthquake began; in Wellington the main shock lasted for at least 50 seconds. People fled outdoors, where they remained for the night in tents and makeshift beds, as incessant aftershocks rocked the area – one person counted 250 in the first 11 hours. The aftershocks would continue for months. For the first day after the main quake, as far away as New Plymouth an almost continuous vibration could be felt by people sitting, or when leaning against walls.
After the 1848 Marlborough earthquake, many Wellington buildings had been rebuilt in wood. Some new commercial premises, however, were constructed of brick because of fire risk. The 1855 earthquake damaged many of these, including the jail and the bank. The local council chambers and adjoining government offices, both two-storey wooden buildings, collapsed. However, single-storey wooden houses survived: although many were damaged by falling brick chimneys, or shifted on their foundations, few collapsed.
The number of fatalities caused by the earthquake is estimated at between five and nine. The sole casualty in Wellington was Baron von Alzdorf, who died when a brick chimney in his hotel collapsed. Two people died in a fissure in the Manawatū. In the Wairarapa, several Māori (their reported number varies from two to six), were killed when a whare collapsed. Surprisingly few people were injured.
In the Hutt Valley, slips blocked roads and large fissures opened up in the ground. Numerous landslides scarred the slopes of the Rimutaka Range. The earthquake caused a tsunami in Cook Strait and Wellington Harbour; some buildings on Lambton Quay near the shoreline were flooded by tsunami waves.
The tsunami caused by the 1855 earthquake had several sources. Water first spilled onto the land because the land west of the Wairarapa Fault shifted abruptly north-east. Next, because Wellington’s harbour was raised more on the eastern than on the western side, the harbour waters moved toward the lower side, flooding Lambton Quay.
A tsunami with waves up to 10 metres high was generated in Cook Strait, probably by submarine uplift. These waves entered Wellington Harbour and washed back and forth. The commander of the Pandora, anchored in the harbour, reported: ‘for eight hours … the tide approached and receded from the shore every 20 minutes, rising from eight to ten feet and receding four feet lower than at spring tide.’ 1
The earthquake was caused by movement along at least 140 kilometres of the Wairarapa Fault, along the eastern edge of the Rimutaka Range. About 5,000 square kilometres of land west of the fault was lifted up and tilted. The southern end of the Rimutaka Range rose by over 6 metres, but the uplift decreased westward to near zero along the west coast of the Wellington peninsula. Across Cook Strait, the seaward end of the Wairau valley subsided over a metre. Land also shifted over 18 metres horizontally along the Wairarapa Fault.
The uplift created a new fringe of beach and rock platforms along the Wellington coast. Many jetties in Wellington Harbour became unusable, but there were also beneficial effects. Blocks of the city’s central business district now occupy land that was below sea level before 1855. The newly exposed strip of shoreline between Wellington and the Hutt Valley offered a safe road and railway route – parts of the coastal road had previously been impassable at high tide. The uplift of the region helped drain the swampy lower reaches of the Hutt Valley. Commerce lost but sports gained when a low-lying area known as the Basin Reserve, originally proposed as a shipping basin, instead became Wellington’s cricket grounds.
While memories of the 1848 and 1855 earthquakes were fresh, most of the new buildings in Wellington were constructed of wood. The old Government Buildings, opened in 1876, is one of the most impressive wooden structures of this period, with a facade imitating a classical European stone building.
However, it took only 25–30 years for awareness of building safety to fade. Masonry construction gradually returned, encouraged by city council regulations for fire resistance. By the beginning of the 20th century the earthquake hazard was largely discounted, and between 1913 and 1926 the New Zealand Official Yearbook included the comment that ‘earthquakes in New Zealand are rather a matter of scientific interest than a subject for alarm’.
In the early morning of 1 September 1888, an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.0–7.3 struck the Amuri district of North Canterbury, about 100 kilometres north-west of Christchurch. Felt from New Plymouth to Invercargill, the quake caused damage to buildings over a wide area, including Christchurch.
Although many major earthquakes have struck without warning, this one was heralded by three weeks of noisy foreshocks, which people in Amuri heard as distant rumblings. On 30 August tremors were felt in the Hope Valley from 6.20 p.m. onward, gaining in intensity until an earthquake at 10 p.m. stopped clocks and rang church bells in Canterbury and Westland. More tremors followed the next day. In the late evening they increased in strength and frequency, growing louder until they became deafening before the main earthquake struck at 4.10 a.m. on 1 September.
The heavy shaking lasted 40 to 50 seconds in Christchurch, and there were many aftershocks, several of them felt in Christchurch in the first quarter-hour after the main quake. Aftershocks continued beneath the Hanmer Plains for more than a month.
In North Canterbury, especially in the Hope valley and Hanmer areas, many farm buildings were badly damaged or destroyed, including cob structures (made of rammed earth) and brick and stone buildings. Wooden buildings shifted off their foundations or were badly warped. The earthquake caused landslides in loose sediment, and fissures up to 30 centimetres wide appeared along terraces of the Percival River and in the Hanmer Plains.
In Christchurch, the most notable damage was to Christchurch Cathedral. The top 7.8 metres of the stone spire collapsed, in part because of the sway of the heavy iron cross secured to its top. The Durham Street Wesleyan Church lost some stonework, and the Normal School in Cranmer Square had cracked ceilings and damaged chimneys. Many homes also had broken chimneys and windows. There was more damage in the northern and north-western suburbs, probably due to the peaty subsoils underlying the buildings there. At Lyttelton, boats swung at their moorings, and 10-ton blocks of rock tumbled from bluffs along the Sumner road.
This report appeared in the Lyttelton Times on 5 September 1888:
‘[T]he spire of the Cathedral has come to grief. Its tapering, graceful outline, a landmark for every dweller on the plains within thirty miles, and a beacon for the mariner crossing Pegasus Bay, no longer cuts the sky. Twenty-six feet of the upper spire have given way, and the melancholy appearance of the wreck strikes every eye.’
Strong shaking was reported from the Ōtira Gorge, where new hot springs were observed. Households in Hokitika and Greymouth had damaged chimneys and broken crockery.
The earthquakes were caused by movement along a 30-kilometre section of the Hope Fault, from the junction of the Hope and Boyle valleys to the Hanmer Plain. This major fault crosses the South Island from the Alpine Fault at the Taramakau River to the coast north of Kaikōura. In the Hope valley west of the Hanmer basin, geologist Alexander McKay discovered that farm fences had been offset horizontally by 1.5 to 2.6 metres along the fault. He was the first in the world to show that horizontal movement could occur along faults during earthquakes.
At 10.50 p.m. on 9 March 1929 a magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook the mountain region near Arthur’s Pass for four minutes. Nearly continuous tremors followed for an hour, and aftershocks continued for days. Chimneys and water tanks collapsed, and rocks thundered down the nearby mountain slopes. Railway lines were damaged and slips closed the highway to the West Coast for several months. Despite the damage to houses, no one was injured. Two years later trampers discovered that a mountainside had collapsed during the earthquake, creating a huge landslide that swept 5 kilometres down the Otehake River. The earthquake is believed to have been caused by up to 4 metres of land movement along the Poulter Fault.
Saturday night, 9 March 1929, found many people at a dance at the social hall in Arthur’s Pass. J. L. Spiers, a railway porter, commented: ‘The first indication of the shock was the middle of the roof descending about 18 inches, and the walls bulging out. Then the walls came in again and the floor went up and down.’ The lights went out, but there was no panic. When matches were struck, some of the people were found lying on the floor. 1
On 17 June 1929, at 10.17 a.m., a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the northern South Island. It was felt in cities and towns all over New Zealand. Nelson, Westport and Greymouth reported damage, but it was half a day before authorities realised that the worst hit region was Murchison.
For days preceding the earthquake, booming noises had been heard in the hills around Murchison. The earthquake itself was exceptionally noisy: rumblings were heard in New Plymouth, over 250 kilometres away. It was caused by movement along the White Creek Fault west of Murchison. Land moved upward as much as 4.5 metres along the fault.
When the main shock struck, wooden homes warped, twisted and shifted from their piles, and chimneys and water tanks collapsed. People scrambled outdoors, but once there found they were unable to stand.
Bob White, a pupil at Whale’s Flat school during the 1929 Murchison earthquake recalled:
‘We managed to get out near the gate and were thrown to the ground, which was rocking and heaving like a boat on huge waves by this time. After I suppose a minute … I saw a huge slip hurtling towards us. I yelled and we got to our feet and endeavoured to run back toward the building but the slip overtook us and went straight through the school, leaving the roof perched on top. We were saved by some poplars and a chestnut tree.’ 2
The shaking triggered dozens of huge slips on the steep mountain slopes, which were waterlogged from winter rain. Landslides blocked many rivers, including the Matiri, Maruia, Mokihinui and Buller. The landslide dam on the Mokihinui River later burst; the resulting flood seriously damaged Seddonville.
A massive landslide swept over the Busch and Morel homes, killing four people and damming the Mātakitaki River. In the Maruia valley a landslide pushed the Gibson home across a road and into a gorge, killing three people. Another swept the Holman home into the river, killing two. Of the 17 people who died in the earthquake, 14 were killed by landslides, and 2 in coal mine collapses.
With their homes uninhabitable and aftershocks continuing, residents camped in the open, or in sheds and tents. Communal kitchens were set up, but food supplies ran low. The landslide-dammed rivers posed a danger of flooding, so over several days most people left Murchison. They travelled part of the way in cars, then continued on foot, negotiating slips and streams. They eventually reached Glenhope, where they caught trains to Nelson.
Nelson, Greymouth and Westport had many damaged chimneys and brick buildings – the tower of Nelson Boys’ College collapsed, injuring two boys. In Karamea, damage was minor but numerous slips blocked the coastal road and food ran short. No outside help arrived until an aviator landed a Tiger Moth plane on the beach two weeks later. Vehicles could not reach the town for several months.
In 1936 the Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann used records taken from around the world of the Murchison earthquake to demonstrate that the earth has a solid inner core. It was an important breakthrough in understanding the nature of the earth's interior.
In an era when road work was carried out with pick and shovel, many roads buried by slips in the Buller region did not re-open for months. The Westport to Reefton road was closed for 18 months.
In 1931, New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake devastated the cities of Napier and Hastings. At least 256 people died in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake – 161 in Napier, 93 in Hastings, and 2 in Wairoa. Many thousands more required medical treatment.
The official death toll of the Hawke's Bay earthquake is 256. But there are 258 names on the memorial, and this unofficial number is likely to be correct.
On Tuesday morning, 3 February 1931, at 10.47 a.m., the ground in the Hawke’s Bay region heaved sharply upward and swayed. A deceptive half-minute pause was followed by a downward motion and violent shaking and rocking. In all, the quake spanned two and a half minutes.
As buildings began to disintegrate, many people fled outdoors into a lethal rain of chunks from ornate facades, parapets and cornices. Buildings swayed violently, and their walls bulged and collapsed into the streets in avalanches of brick and masonry that crushed vehicles and people. Roofs caved in on buildings that had large open internal areas, such as churches, libraries and theatres. In some buildings the internal floors pulled free of the swaying walls, collapsing inward in a jumble of girders, wood and plaster.
In Napier, the recently built Nurses’ Home collapsed, killing clerical staff and off-duty nurses who were sleeping. In Hastings at least 50 people were in Roach’s department store when it collapsed; 17 died and many were seriously injured. The entire front of the five-storey Grand Hotel in Hastings crumbled into Heretaunga Street, claiming eight lives. Fifteen died at the Park Island Old Men’s Home near Taradale, but a 91-year-old man was pulled alive from the rubble three days later.
The earthquake struck on the first day of school after the summer holidays. Most pupils managed to escape to the outdoors in time, but nine students died in the wreckage of the brick Napier Technical College. Several of those students had gone back into the school to rescue trapped classmates. Seven students also died at the Marist Fathers’ Seminary in Greenmeadows.
This account is from Jock Stevens, who was at Napier Boys' High School when the earthquake struck:
‘[A] boy said “Earthquake, Sir!” We were immediately struck with the full force of the quake. The master in charge, Matt Alexander, said “Everybody out!” … The shakes sent me flying onto the floor of the doorway and I can still feel the feet of the class trampling over me. I got to my feet and from there I saw the Assembly Hall collapse like a pack of cards – each wall fell in then the tiled roof came down. Then dust clouds blotted it out.’ 1
Within minutes of the earthquake, fire began in three Napier chemist shops in the business district. Firefighters were almost helpless – water pressure faded to a trickle as the reservoir emptied. Attempts to pump sea water from the beach were short-lived, as hoses quickly became blocked by shingle. By mid-afternoon Napier’s business area was ablaze. Some 36 hours later, after a remarkable attempt by firemen, volunteers and sailors working through the night, the fires were extinguished. Almost 11 blocks of central Napier were gutted. Fires also sprang up in Hastings, but water supplies were available there shortly after the earthquake and fire damage was less extensive.
Ahead of the spreading fires and amidst continuing aftershocks, desperate rescuers, using crowbars, shovels, picks, and their hands, worked to reach people trapped in wrecked buildings. Some could not be rescued in time; a doctor administered a lethal overdose of morphine to an injured woman trapped in the ruins of St John’s Cathedral before fire reached her. A number of rescuers were killed as aftershocks caused further collapses.
The navy sloop HMS Veronica had berthed in Napier’s harbour that morning. When the earthquake struck, the harbour bottom rose, leaving the ship aground. On deck, sailors watched as the wharf buckled, roads split open, and buildings collapsed in clouds of dust. The Veronica radioed Auckland, and within hours the cruisers HMS Dunedin and Diomede were on their way, each carrying 450 men and officers, doctors and nurses from Auckland Hospital, and medical and emergency equipment. They arrived the following dawn. Meanwhile, teams of the Veronica’s sailors spread out into the town to help with rescue efforts.
Napier’s hospitals were badly damaged and unusable, so patients were moved to the lawns of the Botanical Gardens, where a surgical station was set up. Emergency hospitals were set up at the Hastings racecourse and at Napier Park racecourse, where doctors operated beneath the grandstand. In the ensuing days, many injured people were evacuated to other centres.
After the earthquake most homes lacked water, electricity, sewerage and chimneys, and people camped in open areas as continuous tremors made it dangerous to stay inside. Within a day the army had set up a tent camp that could house 2,500 people. Women and children were encouraged to leave the area, and refugee camps sprang up in a number of North Island towns. Able-bodied men were required to stay to provide labour for search, demolition and clean-up.
Ten days after the quake, the region was shaken by the largest aftershock since the initial earthquake, a powerful magnitude 7.3 jolt that did yet more damage to already weakened buildings.
‘Then the world collapsed, or exploded. I knew not what was happening as I had never experienced an earthquake. Where grandad had been resting a minute before, a huge wardrobe crashed down. The noise of chimney bricks smashing onto the roof was alarming.’ Donald Locke remembers the Napier earthquake of 1931.
For people who lived through the Napier earthquake of 3 February 1931, the moment the big shake arrived became indelibly sketched on the memory. But for most people the quake was only the beginning. There followed days of looking after the injured, dealing with rubble and sometimes fire, and long nights of personal anxiety. Aftershocks continued for weeks.
We invited people from around New Zealand to send in their memories of the earthquake. Here is a selection.
On 11 March 1932 the government appointed magistrate J. S. Barton and engineer L. B. Campbell as commissioners of Napier. Together with local committees they had the daunting task of organising reconstruction. This included restoring water supplies, replacing sewers, and repairing and inspecting houses before they could be reoccupied. Local survey plans and land titles had been destroyed, so all properties were resurveyed, and interim titles were issued.
Few insurance policies covered earthquakes, and many insurers refused to pay for fire damage that resulted from the quake. In 1931 Parliament had passed the Hawke’s Bay Earthquake Act, which provided loans for local companies and individuals to rebuild their premises. Because of the economic depression, however, the funds granted were far from adequate, and repayment terms were harsh. Much of the money for recovery came from charity, which poured in during the weeks after the quake.
Napier was presented with a unique opportunity: the wholesale replacement of its city centre. The city authorities did not want haphazard growth, so a temporary shopping centre, dubbed Tin Town, was built at Clive Square. It was used for several years while the city centre was being rebuilt. Napier’s new town centre boasted many improvements, including wider streets and some of New Zealand’s earliest underground power and telephone lines.
The loss of life caused by the collapse of so many buildings shocked the country. Engineers studied the building damage to identify the most dangerous defects in design and construction. A Buildings Regulations Committee developed guidelines to ensure the new buildings were safer; their recommendations were the forerunner of building codes now used throughout New Zealand.
Four rival architectural practices joined to share resources and ideas. The buildings of Louis Hay reflected the designs of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Natusch & Sons’ buildings were simple in style, often using arched windows, and Finch & Westerholm produced many Spanish mission style buildings. Most popular was the art deco style of the time, which emphasised spare, clean lines and geometric motifs. E. A. Williams designed some of Napier’s most striking art deco buildings. Their austere modernistic design contrasted sharply with the ornate edifices that had caused so many deaths. Many of these 1930s buildings have since been restored, and are now major attractions.
In November 1932, Hastings celebrated its reconstruction, and in January 1933, almost two years after the earthquake, during the New Napier Carnival, Napier was declared officially ‘reborn’.
Shortly after the earthquake, hundreds of people had made their way to the beach, seeking a safe haven from crumbling buildings. There they found that the sea had retreated far from the shoreline, and many feared a tsunami.
The sea had gone out – for good. The Napier earthquake had been caused by movement along a fault buried deep beneath the region. When it moved, an area above the fault, about 90 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide, domed upward. The land and sea floor were raised by as much as 2.7 metres.
Napier had extensive areas of wetlands, including Ahuriri Lagoon, popular for fishing and recreation. As the land rose, sea water drained from the lagoon, gifting Napier with more than 2,000 hectares of new land. Drains were later put in and eventually rain flushed the sea salt from the soil. The former lagoon became productive land, and the site of Hawke’s Bay airport. Along Napier’s Marine Parade debris from landslides and demolished buildings was placed on the newly upraised foreshore and covered with soil to create a broad garden esplanade.
During the Second World War, in 1942, two powerful earthquakes on 24 June and 2 August caused substantial damage to many towns in the Wairarapa, and in Wellington. The epicentres of the earthquakes were both near Masterton, but because the August main shock was much deeper than the June earthquake, it was less severe. They were caused by movement along buried faults, so the fault ruptures did not reach the surface.
On 24 June there was a minor earthquake at 8.14 p.m., followed at 11.16 p.m. by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that was felt from Auckland to Dunedin. This main shock lasted about a minute, and aftershocks continued through the night: over 200 were felt before 7 a.m.
The earthquake was centred near Masterton, and the heaviest damage was in the town’s business area. Many shops had brick facades with ornate parapets and gable ends. These crashed into the street, taking with them the wooden verandahs that sheltered the footpaths and the electricity and telephone lines. Heavy roofs and water tanks collapsed. In many Wairarapa towns, including Eketāhuna, Martinborough, Gladstone, Carterton and Greytown, churches and commercial premises, especially brick buildings, were damaged. Most houses in the Wairarapa were timber framed – they survived the shaking well, but almost all lost their brick chimneys. Close to the epicentre, however, some houses shifted off their foundations.
‘I was just going to bed when we got this terrific shake. We could hear bricks coming down through the roof into the room where our baby was sleeping. I crawled along the passage – you couldn’t walk, the whole place was rocking so badly. It was terrifying. I could hear the baby screaming but I couldn’t get to the cot because of the rubble in the room. The cot shot from one side of the room to the other with the violence of the quakes. I finally found the cot, got the baby out and we sat underneath.’ 1
In Wellington, 80 kilometres from the earthquake epicentre, buildings swayed and people rushed into the streets. Walls in many older buildings cracked, windows shattered, and in the central city, bricks, concrete and masonry came crashing down onto footpaths. In the countryside, the earthquake caused many landslides, and damaged roads, railway lines and bridges.
Only one person died – a man in Wellington was killed by coal gas escaping from a fractured pipe. Had the earthquake struck during shopping hours, many might have died; but it hit late on Saturday evening, when movie theatres had closed and few people were about.
The army was called in to assist with demolition and clean-up, and to guard buildings. Bricklayers from all over New Zealand came to help rebuild and repair the thousands of wrecked chimneys.
About five weeks later, while the damage was still being repaired, earthquakes struck again. A magnitude 5.6 tremor was felt in the late afternoon of 1 August. It was followed by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake at 12.34 a.m. the next day, felt through much of New Zealand.
Structural damage in Wellington and the Wairarapa was extensive, due to the cumulative effects of the two earthquakes. Eketāhuna suffered more damage than in June. Two blocks of Manners Street in Wellington were closed for several months because of the dangerous state of the buildings. One Wellington building had lost 316 windows in June: 100 shattered in the August earthquake. In Wellington at least 5,000 houses and 10,000 chimneys were damaged by the two major earthquakes. Several years later, many buildings were still unrepaired. This prompted the government to set up an Earthquake and War Damage Commission for earthquake insurance in 1944.
In the early morning of 24 May 1968, the northern South Island was rocked by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake centred near Īnangahua Junction, a small community 40 kilometres east of Westport. At 5.24 a.m. people there were woken by shaking violent enough to throw them out of bed. Many hastily escaped from their homes, amidst falling chimneys and roof tiles.
At Whitecliffs a limestone bluff collapsed onto a farmhouse and pushed it downhill, killing one woman instantly and fatally injuring another. Shortly after the earthquake, one man died near Greymouth when his car hit a section of road that had subsided at a bridge approach. Three men were killed later when a rescue helicopter crashed.
At daylight, a relief centre was set up in the Ministry of Works yards in Īnangahua. People gathering there were dismayed to hear radio news broadcasts at 6.30 a.m. mention only mild earthquakes – the rest of New Zealand seemed unaware of Īnangahua’s plight. All roads out of the area were blocked and there was no telephone, or electricity to send radio messages. Several hours later, however, a driver contacted Gisborne on his truck radio. By late morning commercial and air force helicopters were coming into the area to survey damage.
Ruth Inwood, an Īnangahua dairy farmer, recalls the moment the quake struck:
‘I thought it was the end of the world … The noise was horrendous. …Our fridge was flipped on its side, a heavy three-seater sofa was thrown across the lounge, ceilings were ripped open, windows exploded out of their frames, cupboards were completely emptied, and broken ornaments and crockery littered the floor. … It was like an explosion underneath us. The house was shunted up in the air and then it shook violently. A lot of houses were knocked clean off their piles.’ 1
Other West Coast towns were heavily shaken: more than two-thirds of the chimneys in Greymouth, Westport and Reefton were damaged. Reefton residents realised that help would be needed in isolated areas. Four people, including a constable and a doctor carrying a pack of medical supplies, walked to Īnangahua Junction. There the doctor treated most patients outdoors because aftershocks were still jolting the area.
The Īnangahua tremors triggered numerous landslides in the surrounding mountains. A huge landslide dammed the Buller River above Īnangahua Junction. The rising water backed up for 7 kilometres, raising the river 30 metres above its normal level. If the landslide dam had burst, the river would have flooded not only Īnangahua but also Westport. Everyone in its path had to be evacuated.
Twelve hours after the quake, one group of about 50 people started walking from Īnangahua Junction towards Reefton. Army and commercial helicopters began flying people to Rotokohu, where they could board buses to Reefton, while air force helicopter crews checked all outlying farmhouses. In all, 235 people were airlifted out. The earth-filled river eventually overflowed the landslide debris, but eroded it downward gradually without causing serious flooding.
The earthquake ruined many years of costly work improving and sealing the highways in the Īnangahua and Buller Gorge areas. Over a 50-kilometre stretch, the road through Buller Gorge was blocked in more than 50 places, either buried under slips or with gaps where the road itself had fallen into the gorge. The earthquake had damaged or destroyed 50 bridges. It also derailed two goods trains, and over 100 kilometres of damaged railway track had to be re-laid.
At 1.35 p.m. on 2 March 1987, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck the Bay of Plenty region, cutting power and sending many people outdoors. Minutes later a much stronger quake rocked the region. This main shock, at 1.42 p.m., had a magnitude of 6.3 and was centred north of Edgecumbe. Four aftershocks with magnitudes greater than 5 occurred in the next six hours, and smaller aftershocks were felt for weeks.
The Edgecumbe earthquake was the first since the 1968 Īnangahua quake to cause major damage. Although not of an exceptional magnitude, it was damaging because it was very shallow. No one was killed, but several dozen people suffered serious injuries. One woman was hurt by a falling piano in her home, and another was hit by a bull thrown out of its pen at a stock yard.
Industrial sites were badly affected. At the Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill in Kawerau a loaded logging truck toppled onto its side. Mill workers escaped from falling debris through a maze of twisted stairs and walkways. One man was thrown over the rail of a catwalk to the concrete floor 3 metres below. Another was trapped under 11 huge circular saws, each of them 2 metres in diameter. Following the main shock, an engineer checking for structural damage fell 5 metres from a platform.
At Bay Milk Products in Edgecumbe, huge stainless steel milk silos collapsed, spilling thousands of litres of milk. Two milk tankers were thrown on their sides. At the N.Z. Distillery Company, tanks of spirits collapsed, saturating the ground with vodka and gin.
In Kawerau 40 houses were evacuated because of an unstable hill above them. A major worry was the large earthfill hydro dam at Matahina on the Rangitāiki River. Staff found minor cracks in the roadway and concrete abutments. They opened the floodgates to lower the lake level, but controlled the flow to ensure the river would not overtop its stopbanks downstream. Below the dam, the residents of Te Mahoe were evacuated as a precaution. The dam was repaired in 1988, and subsequently strengthened in the late 1990s to withstand earthquake motion.
Some roads cracked or acquired ‘judder bars’ as the ground buckled. Railway tracks were twisted and bent, and a diesel-electric locomotive toppled over.
In the hours after the Edgecumbe earthquake, accounts of the disaster became wildly exaggerated. The tremors produced a massive dust cloud on Moutuhorā (Whale Island), an extinct volcano off the coast. Soon there were ‘eyewitness reports’ that the island had erupted. A Singapore newspaper quoted ‘the Police’ as saying that 95% of homes in the Kawerau, Whakatāne and Edgecumbe areas were uninhabitable. In the United States, Washington radio stations reported that 400,000 people had been made homeless. The New Zealand Embassy in Washington was inundated with calls from worried people seeking news.
The most spectacular effect of the Edgecumbe earthquake was the 7-kilometre-long rift that appeared across the Rangitāiki Plains – the Edgecumbe Fault. A fissure up to 3 metres wide and 3–4 metres deep opened up along much of the fault, although some sections were marked just by zones of cracks. A woman who had been picking fruit was thrown from a ladder by the quake. Soon after, she was driving hurriedly down a road to check her home when her car became airborne and flew 6 metres across the rift, landing at the bottom of the scarp.
The earthquake had been caused by movement along the fault; the land to the north-west had dropped by up to 2 metres. The region which sank downward is now more prone to flooding.
‘We clutched each other for support while the shaking continued. As soon as it stopped, we ran crying all the way back to the home. This is an experience that I will never forget.’ Paul De Rungs remembers the Wairarapa earthquake of June 1942.
An earthquake is such a sudden traumatic event that it usually becomes an enduring memory. When we invited New Zealanders to send us stories of earthquakes, we were impressed at how vividly they recalled their feelings and the details of quite minor incidents.
Here is a selection of those stories of earthquakes since 1942.
Ansell, Rebecca, and John Taber. Caught in the crunch. Auckland: HarperCollins, 1996.
Conly, Geoff. The shock of ’31 – the Hawke’s Bay earthquake. Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1980.
Grapes, Rodney. Magnitude eight plus. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2000.
Grayland, Eugene. More New Zealand disasters. Wellington: A. H. & A.W. Reed, 1978.
Lowry, Murray. Edgecumbe earthquake. Alpha series 60. Wellington: Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1987.
McConnochie, Helen. Afterwords. Interviews and letters from survivors of the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake. Napier: Friends of Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust, 2004.
McGregor, Robert. The great quake – the story of the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake. Napier: Regional Publications, 1989.
McLaren, Jan. A night of terror – Wairarapa’s 1942 earthquake. Masterton: Wairarapa Archive, 2002.
Rogers, Anna. New Zealand tragedies – earthquakes. Wellington: Grantham House, 1996.
Ruscoe, Quentin. Walking on jelly – the Bay of Plenty earthquake 1987. Wellington: Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1988.
Wright, Matthew. Quake – Hawke’s Bay 1931. Auckland: Reed, 2001.
Information on the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake, and the architectural styles (especially art deco) used in rebuilding Napier.
http://library.christchurch.org.nz/childrens/nzdisasters/earthquakes.asp
On the Christchurch City Libraries site, summaries of five major earthquakes (Wellington 1855, Murchison 1929, Hawke’s Bay 1931, Īnangahua 1968, Edgecumbe 1987).
http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/earthquakes/historic.html
On the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences site, this map shows the locations of large New Zealand earthquakes.
http://www.rsnz.org/publish/nzjgg/notable/Cowan1991.pdf
A summary of historic records and geological information on the 1888 earthquake in north Canterbury by Hugh Cowan, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand (1991). This is a PDF version (0.8 MB).
http://www.rsnz.org/publish/nzjgg/1998/33.pdf
Grapes, Rodney, and others. ‘Rupturing of the Awatere Fault during the October 16 1848 Marlborough earthquake, New Zealand: historical and present day evidence.’ This is a 1998 paper from the New Zealand Journal of Geology & Geophysics, published on the website of the Royal Society of New Zealand.