GREAT LANDSLIDE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 32, 7 February 1931, Page 14

GREAT LANDSLIDE

CARS UNDER THE DEBRIS

A few seconds before thousands of tons of earth fellVway from the Bluff Hill, Napier, Mr. G. C. Wilson, sales manager of the motor-car department of Wright, Stephenson, and Co., Ltd., at Wellington, passed along the road underneath the cliffs with his wife in a motor-car. They cleared the big landslide by no more than,4o yards. "We were staying at the Masonic Hotel," said Mr. Wilson this morning, "and at about 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday I picked up my wife at the hotel to take her for a run round. After motoring through the city for a few minutes I decided to drive round the Marine parade to Port Ahuriri. We had just got over the other side of the railway lino when the earth came down. We missed it by a few seconds "As I was driving along," continued Mr. Wilson, "I noticed several people on the footpath underneath the hill, and I know there were two cars following us; I saw neither the cars nor the people again, and they must be xinder the debris." , Mr. Wilson said it; was impossible for him to estimate how many tons of earth had fallen, but it "extended right across the road to the sea-wall and on to the beach.- In his opinion it would take months to clear the debris away. > '' The most peculiar, and I might say uncanny, part of it all," said Mr. Wilson, "was the way the sea went out after the earthquake. It must have receded quite 50ft. The lighters which were out in. the roadstead could not get in owing to the rapidly shallowing water. They came in as far as' they could, and then the watersiders who had been working the steamers in the roadstead were' landed in rowing boats." Mr. and Mrs. Wilson drove back by way of the Shakespeare road hill, and were able to leave Napier by car at 2.30 on Tuesday afternoon.