SERIOUS SLIP ON EAST COAST

Chronicle (Levin), 1 July 1946, Page 4

SERIOUS SLIP ON EAST COAST

■Press Association

PASSENGERS TAKEN BY CAR

By Telegraph—

NAPIER, July 1. The East Goast railway was com- . pletely disrupted this morning by a L'000-yar.d slip, which bfocked the southern entrance to the Mohaka Tunnel. All available machinery was dispatched from Napier this morning, but it is expected that it ■ may be some days before the line is cleared. Tw? further slips have blocked the line, one at the beach loop, north of Wairoa, and the second, which occurred yesterday. a mile south of.the slip at Mohaka Tunnel. Passengers from Gisborne and Wairoa were brought to Napier today by car. The Napier -Wellington express did not wait for thcT passengers from the north. • . The Napier-Taupo and NapierWairoa roads are both open after a slip was cleared from the former yesterday. The slip was the result of a severe southerly storm in wnich over two inches of rain fell in the 24 hours ended 9.30 to-day" following three inches. in the previous three days.

A subsidence of 40 feet of railway track in the Kqpuawhara Valley, Gisborne-Wairoa line, which occurred on . Thursday, became Worse on Saturday stopping traffic south. Passengers were transport.ed by bus* to Nuhaka where they were transferred to an .emergency train.

Riyers and streams throughout the district, swollen by heavy rain on the back country, were running bank high. Flood warnings were issued Saturday morning to settlers along the route of the Waipaoa River which threatened to spill over a when it reached a peak late in the afternoon, with the incoming tide. Publie works gangs using bulldozers and other equipment, cut a new channel to the sea two miles from the present mouth and thus, it is believed, averted a major inun.da-r tion in the lower teaches of the river, though danger remains as the result of further heavy squalls.