More Info →Letter from Hawkes Bay earthquake survivor

This is a general letter for all the family.
Palmerston North
Showgrounds Feb 7th 1931

My dear mother
As soon as possible I sent that cable. I didn’t know what reports you might have read of that most terrifying earthquake, but no reports could have been exaggerated. It came with most awful suddenness. I happened to be standing near a bench and hung on like grim death while the building shock and swayed like a see saw, I swaying with it. The papers say it lasted a minute, but they are wrong it lasted centuries. With a horrible crash half the building came down and in the short lull that followed we raced for our lives. The street was blocked with stones and bricks the first thing I saw were the feet and legs of a man, the rest of him was buried. We stumbled and climbed over those stones on to the beach, and there we could just cling to each other while the earth rocked like a ship at sea, and watch the buildings crash down. Great cracks in the earth, telegraph poles bent and the lines lying on the ground. The hotel looked like a doll house with the front lifted off, with one bit of the balcony left, where a girl sat pinned under part of the roof. It seemed hour before a man could get a ladder to bring her down.
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The gas tanks exploded, the water pipes burst, the business parts of the town burst into flames. In less than an hour the Masonic was a smouldering ruin. There were such wonderful escapes, one girl had just opened her door and had to grip the handle before the bedroom disappeared in front of her. She ran down the first stairs , the second one was blocked. There was a man to help her through the window, the man told her if she wouldn’t drop he would push her off, while another man below yelled not to look but to drop. He knew there was a man under the pile of rubbish and that the place was in flames. One boy was in bed and the bed crashed through two stories and he had to get out of the debris. I saw him on the front cut and bleeding barefooted with pyjamas torn and a face like chalk. Another girl came down with the building and was severely injured but everyone had a thrilling escape. Later on one of the girls named Ellen took some of us to her mothers to a place called Clive 4 or 5 miles away. We scrambled on a truck and went off Vady(?) Elizabeth, Peggy and myself.
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All along, the road was torn up, houses tilted (?) , gates wrenched off, railway lines like a switch bank, and chimneys fallen down. Ellen’s mother the poor old lady sat outside her ruined house there was hardly a piece of crockery and, and 40 dozen eggs carefully preserved for winter sale, all gone west, but she set to and made a fire in an old tin, boiled the water and made tea. Someone asked the time, it was then only about 2 o’clock and we seemed to have lived years. I sat on an upturned bucket gratefully drinking a cup of tea without milk or sugar and still more gratefully having a cigarette. I could reflect that I had lost all my personal belongings. I had been out wearing my oldest frock and shoes and not a penny piece. All my beautiful books, all my clothes, all the things I have loved and cherished all my life. But I could also reflect that by a mere fluke I was sitting there at all. Tuesday morning I am off duty at ten o’clock. That morning I was very late and was just upstairs when a message came Mr Hanlon wanted to see me. I was expecting that summons, it was for Mr Hanlon to give me the keys and make me head of the department.
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5 minutes later I had no bedroom. But for that summons I would have been buried under the Masonic. For the rest of the day there were slight shocks and in the early evening we returned to the house to get something to eat. We had just sat down when the house shock and rattled and we were out as quickly as possible, with white faces and shaken with terror. Ellen’s brother rigged up our tents, one for us and one for the mothers and children. The men slept outside. Sleep did I say, there was no sleep and no rest for any of us. At dawn I got up and in the east was the radiant sunrise. Looking the other way I could still see the town blazing. Later in the day, we four, leaving Ellen with her people went back to Napier. We stopped a car on the road and got a lift. The town was still smouldering. The blue jackets were digging out the bodies, the death toll will never be fully known. I notice a cart full of neatly tied up white bags, but I can tell you I looked away again very quickly. Those bags contained the remains of the victims. Hastings the next town had just as bad a quake but not much fire.
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We were directed to a place called Nelson Park, a huge lawn with a broad cycle track round it. A thin(?) boat was down from Auckland. This boat had been timed to leave for England at 2:30. She left at 2:30 but she came to Napier bringing nurses and doctors. Two boys from the boat rigged up a most beautiful tent for us. Big enough to hold 20 people. Our faces were burnt with the sun. We were dusty and dirty and tousled heads of hair. The boys said we looked like real refugees just about and destitute as anyone could be, and yet they had seen none as cheerful as we. We met a man from the Masonic called Ernie, he introduced his family, his fat smiling wife, his children, his father and his brother-in-law and that night they stayed in our tent. You have no idea what a gay scene it was, this lawn dotted with hundreds of tents, brilliantly lighted, cars flashing around the track, a canteen, an open air kitchen, a crowd of people laughing, flirting and smoking all excitedly telling of their escapes. You wouldn’t think that ten minutes

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walk away there was a smoking, ruined, desolate town. Gramophones were playing, no one seemed to have a care in the world. That night there were one or two bad shakes. I was glad when daylight came. We next went to a tent where clothes were being given away and I was given a frock, a hat and a coat. Then began the exodus. A thousand women and children were to be sent away as soon as possible. A constant stream of lorries, cars and trucks. Mothers and children being taken first. We stood in the scorching sun, sick and tired and faint. At last I saw a man I knew. I went up to him and once. Well you are one of the lucky ones he said, and through his influence we very soon got away and arrived here late in the night. We are at the Showgrounds an enormous place. There are several large halls, with straw beds laid in rows, but we laid down feeling more safe even though this town felt the shake. I could never describe these wonderful people. This place was made ready, now its like a little town on its own, with a post office, a police stations, a home for babies
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with nurses, a refreshment room going all day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner served, a laundry put up and rows of clothes lines. There are rooms full of clothes come from all parts of the country. Some of these people have never had a holiday, but they are having one now. We all have blue Refugee tickets and they only have to be shown and the town is ours, especially from the Masonic because it was the first to go and we had been in the most danger. The residents are bringing their cars and taking us to their own houses for hot baths. I went late on Friday and had my clothes off and a wash for the first time since Tuesday morning. Even my face had never been washed because at Napier every drop of water had been precious. It’s been very awkward writing this while the kids are yelling and jumping about and every time they jump at the table my pen jerks. Now here I am, I haven’t the slightest idea of what’s going to happen but I am a real refugee, like you see in the talkies. So if you have any old clothes or stockings and sent them, put ‘refugee’ on the parcel and I don’t see how the customs could charge anything. My friend Mollie is here for an operation. It took place on Tuesday morning part of the hospital came down, but I heard the patients were safely got away, but the nurses home an adjoining building came down like a pack of cards and the nurses killed.
Love to all Mag.