GISBORNE ROAD

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 31, 6 February 1931, Page 10

GISBORNE ROAD

VERY HEAVY DAMAGE

MOTORISTS' STARTLING EXPERIENCE

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)' GISBOBNE, sth February. Aviators and motorists report very heavy damage between Wairoa and Napier, where the road, according to. the Auckland Automobile Association patrol, will be impassable for months, thus cutting off communication with Gisborne from the south. Exciting experiences befell a party in a service car returning home from Napier on Tuesday morning. The party was in the service car and had just passed over tho bridge at the foot of the Waikare Gorge, about 20 miles south of Wairoa, .when the earth began to rock and shift. Within a few chains of the bridge there is a turn in the road round an old slip, and in this tiny sanctuary the car was when the driver and passengers realised what was happening. According to one of the passengers, the walls of the gorge appeared to approach each other overhead, and from the banks near the car boulders were thrown out gs though by explosion. Slips came tearing down the slopes both in front of and behind the car, and stonesi rattled on the hood. Mr. Biggar, the passenger who told the story, mentioned that he had hardly alighted from the car when he was struck'- by a fair-sized rock, and that' other passengers were also bombarded. The slips completely covered the road on both sides of the gorge, and the only place in sight where the road surface could be distinguished was the little pocket in which the car was standing. Heaped round and under the machine were, rocks of all sizes, but by some chance everything big seemed to have missed the car, and it was abandoned in quite good order. ! LANDSLIDES EVERYWHERE. The first thought of the' occupants was to reach a place of safety. Up the hillside to level ground above was a stiff climb under ordinary circumstances, and with tho ground heaving and rocking it was amazingly difficult, especially as the party did not know but that any moment might see them hurled into the gorge again. Beaching the top after the most strenuous exertions, they turned to observe the effect of the quake. They saw the hill all round them shuddering and landslides in motion everywhere. > One area of nearly an acre in Mr. Reeves's property across the Gorge was thrown into the air and daylight was seen underneath it by the amazed observers,' who estimated that it must have been forced 30ft or 40ft clear of the surging area. Instead of breaking up it whirled round and fell back into the hole from which it had been ejected, stones hur.tling out of the mass as it fell. The scene beggared description. The force of the quake could not have been more apparent in tho town oi Napier itself, Mr. J3iggar, contended. VIADUCTS INTACT. Tho hotel .at Waikare was found to be damaged and the occupants badly startled, but they were no more startled than the party of travellers who had escaped from the gorge. Mr. Biggar later paid a visit to Matahoura Gorge, and there found the road obliterated as it was in the Waikare Gorgo. 'Curiously enough two big railway viaducts had stood' up under the strain. The approaches to the viaducts were crumbled, and the rails and sleepers left hanging in mid-air,' but the steel structures over the nearby gorges were intact and were believed, by the workmen in charge of them to be undamaged. * ' ON VIADUCT DURING QUAKE. Among the most thrilling experiences of the earthquake period must have ranked that: of some men who, suspended on a staging from the Matahoura Gorge viaduct, were injured in painting the structure when the earthquake came. , They told a tale of their battle to retain their hold on the staging; which swung and buckled as the viaduct itself whipped this way and that. Aviators on the way to Gisborne report that tho fronts of the cliffs near Waikare and Mohaka have fallen into the sea. The latest observation was made to-day by Captain Bolt, who reported on arrival that cliffs had been shattered and scattered a considerable distance out to sea.