WHEN SOCIAL SERVICE STOPS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 31, 6 February 1931, Page 9

WHEN SOCIAL SERVICE STOPS

(By an "Evening Post" Representative who reached Napier on Tuesdaynight.) Special -writing for newspaper purposes, on the occasion of some "large sensation, " is difficult enough when the ordinary pnblic services (telegraphs, [telephones, lighting, food supply, sanitation, etc.) are in good working order. Bn,t when earthquake and fire have put all these, and more, out of action, it is then that the newspaper writor meets with, super-difficulties. Ordinarily he expects, and has a right to espeet, that le and his news dispatches will be carried by public services for the usual small consideration. By slaves of civilised -convenience, the faithfulness of the train time-table is assumed as a matter of course (as is that of motor services), and if it is a special occasion the Telegraph Department may even send messengers to collect Press "copy," while on any and every occasion there is somo sort of. refreshment (solid or liquid) available nearby.. The hundred and one littl" amenities of social service make civilised -operations easy. ■ But when a catastrophe falls, like the Hawkes Bay visitation, most or all of these aids to efficiency and comfort stop with a bang!, ■ " '■ ~ EFFICIENCY OF A MODERN CAB. In the stricken area the railways refused duty. The roads nearly did. More than one motor vehicle, stuck in damaged places, cracks, or pitfalls. Still more turned back from crevasses'and crumpled bridge approaches. Route after route had to be tested and tried on' the Tuesday night following the crash, before a passway could be found into' Napier itself. Even to get there that night (side-stepping stricken Hastings), was in itself an adventure.' / ■ Once there, conveniences ended; There was no lighting save that of the fires ; no. water, and nothing to drink save out of a bottle.' Fortunately, the modern motor-car is a marvellous, self-contained unit, independent of rails, capable of carrying food and equipment, and-—note this —■ possessed-, of .its ■ own lighting system,, interior as well as .exterior. An aeroplane could hardly have landed (voluntarily) in burning Napier on Tuesday, night. But the motor-car —sometimes nosing its, way, sometimes speeding— rushed right into the citadel. Leaving Wellington af ter 8 , 2. p.m., some three hours after the big first shake, the "Evening Post" car had surmounted all obstacles, including that big uptilted crack on the bitumen; part of the Hastings-Napier road, and was on Napier Marine parade between 10 and 11 p.m. A journey unforgettable I ■All lighting at Napier was supplied by a brilliant moon,over a' peaceful sea, and by acres of burning buildings ranging up to three or four stories, whose. ghastly riven walls of broken brick carved patterns in the glare—patterns that would make the work of, a futurist artist look simple. In the general il-lumination-the headlights of'the- Na-' pier cars still in commission were unnoticed: , Most of them were; "hors de combat or parked out of the way (if such were possible) on the Marine Parade. Beyond tho parking limit on the Parade progress was made on foot pa3t five hundred yards of blaming buildings (Napier's best). Debris, .partly burning, that had been cast thirty yards across the street had reduced the navigable part of the broad Parade to narrow proportions, and even that part was ■threatened by burning street poles. A few yards away people were trying to sleep on the beach between the parapet and the high water line. \ : RECUMBENT BRICK, SHATTERED WOOD. Having traversed the sea, front of the burning area to the fire-free part be-, yond Tennyson street, where stands the police station, the pressman was fortunate to arrive in nick of time to step into the' motor-car in which Police Inspector Cuming was about to take another look at the inner, central part of the inferno. This tour, mado about midnight, is indescribable1, in mere print. In places, the brick walls on either1 aide of a street had fallen out bo far that the car could just scrape through. In places it had to reverse and retreat. One had to admire the driver's skill and nerve. Hundreds "of tons of ruined wall—brick, masonry, ■wood —were poised ready to fall. Firefighters maoe the best they could of the risks, fighting with gelignite rather than with water. (No water 'available save by pumping, and little at that.) It was known that many dead were under debris. How many, no, ono knew. Another motor tour made after midnight covered the hill portion of the town (§cinde Island) above the flat burning area. Here the wooden residences had fared vastly better than the business blocks below, yet quite several had gone down the hill, others strewed narrow steep streets with chimneys and litter, and the still quaking earth, was the couch which nearly everybody chose in- residential Napior this , terrible Tuesday night. Our driver,was Dr. Fitzgerald, and how ho tended, the injured as he went, in open 'air hospitals or open garages, has already been told, i With living houses battered and holed and doors jammed, few people dared venture back into homes still in peril from quake and fire. TRAGEDY AT HILL' TOP. The dead wore already multiplying in the Courthouse (turned into a morgue), but their total wag uihguessed. Even the number of nurses lying dead under the pile of debris (formerly the nurses' home) was unknown. The general hospital alongside was severely hit and in parts collapsed, but the nurses' home had simply tumbled in a heap. The site, on the top of the hill, ■ one of the most commanding in Napier, has been turned in an instant into a sepulchre. It marks perhaps the climax of all these terrible scenes. It is hard to say whether the terrors of the burning business flats, now right down below our feet like a pit of fire, wero worse than this pathetic spectacle on the • Seinde Island heights, where nurses and workers surveyed the tumbled tomb of their colleagues while they worked all night long in gardens and elsewhere to make comfortable the surviving patients. Though the moonlight helped the distance views on this midnight tour of the, uplands, it did not show clearly what had happened a mile or two away at Port Ahuriri, and in the inner harbour. So it was planned to tour again with tho aid of tho early morning sun. Active operations .ceased with an inspection of tho alleged 'new sea level off the Marine parade. HAD THE AIR-LINES HELD GOODI But a couple of hours would intervene -just time to write up these grim proceedings. Where would be found a niche of shelter and a reading light to write by? Here came to our rescue the

THIS PARALYSING VISITATION

THE EFFECTS ON COMMUNITY LIFE

faithful ear that had made the journey all the way from Wellington. Once more inside it and the interior light turned on, it was easy to turn out a couple of columns before daybreak. And that was done. The initial descriptive article that appeared on page 13 of the; "Evening Post" yesterday received its finishing touchej as the rising fires of tho dawn (Wednesday) paled the earthquake fires of Napier. Those columns 'of print were on paper by 5 a.m. (or eighteen,hours after the first crash in Napier), but the. problem was how to get them, with photographs, to Wellington. After a couple of hours spent in taking sun-lighted, special photographs, the pressman saw the faithful car, driven by his colleague, speed southward with both "copy" and plates in search of a telegraph office competent to take tho! former, or 'an aeroplane competent to take both. Somewhere southward, probably at Hastings aerodrome, an aeroplane was found, and the "copy" and plates were handed to it for. delivery to the "Evening Post" in Wellington. But the gods were unkind. Only a day later was it known to the workers at the front that the goods they had worked so hard to produce missed that day's issue (Wednesday) through a landing of the aeroplane en route. do yesterday's (Thursday's) publication, though rapid enough, was a day behind what could reasonably be hoped for, had the airlines held good. , . GLUTTED WIRES. Even yesterday, when the writer had worked as far south as Waipukurau and Danneyirke, those telegraph offices were too rushed with urgent work to handle nine hundred words of Press message in time for an evening paper. Thus it is seen how the machinery processes of communication, which in general run so smoothly, stop or block in a catastrophe like that of Hawkes Bay. , One more good point for the motor-, car-^-the, pneumatic tires are a sort of insulation against the constantly recurring tremors and tilts. Even a good sharp up-tilton Tuesday night was so absorbed by the tiies of the standing car that, it did not > hinder writing. On the other hand, wood quivers constantly,, and on Wednesday night, sleeping on the verandah floor of a deserted house at Hastings, > every . sharp jog seemed like a poke, in the /ribs. [■ According to the stopped clock on the fallen parapet of the collapsed band rotunda on Marine parade, Napier, the first and greatest shock occurred at about 11 minutes to 11. Here is a timetable .of events as the writer saw them. ■ About 9.30 p.m. on Tuesday, or some twelve hours after the first crash, Hastings waß reached and found to'be more than half destroyed ('quake or fire' or, both) in the business quarter. List of recovered dead, and unrecovered dead, unobtainable. Buildings smouldering (afterwards.flaming again). People all sleeping put. .Gar dontinued ■ northward. .'■ '' .' . About an hour' later, say 10.30 p.m., the glare of Napier became mixed with the moonlight. Acres of fire. Little or no .water... Lighting and drainage out of action.' Hundreds of dangerous Dead list unobtainable. From 11 p.m. till 2 a.m., inspection of burning business area and the residential hills above it, including hospital and nurses-' home.. No hysteria. No panic. Walked down to edge of sea with local witnesses, who attested that the sea was much below old. low-; water mark. From 2 km. till 5 a.m. (Wednesday), fyritmg-up, and during next couple of hourß photographing. : ARRIVAL 'OF MINISTERS. About 7 a.m., meeting of Mr. Ransom and Ministers with local authorities. Plans, made in a police station still bucking with shakes, and from tho roof of which two fallen chimneys had:just been pulled with a crash. ■ : About 8 a.m. warships seen arriving, and huge extent of slip on Bluff road noted. ■•■■, Shortly after that the shovelling away of . debris on the Parade began systematically, naval men taking: the lead and setting up a traffic police. It became known that plans for evacuation of women and children from an almost waterless, drainageless, and potentially pestilential environment were developing. ■■' More dead were arriving at the courthouse-morgue. The fires were not done, ;but the clean-up had begun. As the Wednesday morning wore on people from outside began to flock in on various businesses, but lack of communications, food, and water threatened paralysis of all business. It became evident that another day at least would be needed to straighten things up even to vthe point of restoring communications, and that these, limited- in volime, would then be more or less monopolised by the exodus and relief operations. So, his car having already gone south with dispatches, the writer accepted the first friendly lift out of town to have another look at Hastings. And that is another story. PORT AND INNER HARBOUR. It may here be mentioned, however, that, before quitting Napier, a daylight view from the high ground was obtained, and it indieatod a very general srhash at Port Ahuriri. The Veronica was still at the wharf; this, said the Napierites present, might be bad business for the Veronica if the stories of shallowing and coastaluplift were true, but certainly tho-Veronica's men had been a boon for Napier, as they arrived very rapidly after the crash and worked like Titans. A sufficient view was obtained of Port Ahuriri to show that of the wool stores and warehouses and wholesale buildings at the port only a small proportion remained; most were damaged by fire or earthquake, and some were completely collapsed. The Napierites considered that further evidence was observable of the lifting of the coastline and the crumpling of the embankment. Also, they declared, the islet The Watchman, in the inner harbour, has had its cap cut off. . Farther away on the skyline are the mountains, from which* eye-witnesses state, vast clouds of dust arose in the first mighty convulsion, and extended far up into the air.* '