WHERE WAS THE CENTRE?

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

WHERE WAS THE CENTRE?

WARNING BY TELEPHONE

(By "The Post's" Special Reporter.) NAPIEE, This Day. On Thursday evening a "Post" reporter went out to the Taradale electrical sub-station, through which the lines from the Waikarenioana hydroelectric station pass on their way to Wellington. The Public Works Department lias a special service line north to AVaikarenioana and south to I Mangahao. On that evening quite a I number of shocks wore felt, some of them fairly heavy jolts. The Waikarcmoana, operator several times interrupted conversation to say that a shock had been felt, and a couple of seconds later the rumble and the shako would come. Waikareinoana reported them all as light, but two as felt at Taradale could not be so described. The Public Works linesmen who have been over the country think that the centre was somewhere near Pihanui, forty miles north of Napier, and the two «seconds warning which could be. given by telephone and the fact that the shocks were weaker at Waikaremoana may bear this opinion out, the shocks travelling north and south to the two speakers from a point somewhere between. On Tuesday the line through from Mangahao to Waikaremoana was in use when the heavy shake came. The Waikaremoana officer reported it as heavy and put the telephone down. The Mangahao man had left the telephone box and had shut the door before the earth tremor reached him.