ESTIMATE OF MILLIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 33, 9 February 1931, Page 10

ESTIMATE OF MILLIONS

REPLACEMENT VALUES

£By Telegraph.—Press Association.) HASTINGS, Bth February. An attempt made to obtain from those best qualified an estimate of the damage has proved futile. Nobody knows nor will know for many weeks. It is perfectly certain that it will reach not one or two, but several million pounds. Gnu calculation alone, and it is but a bagatelle, gives .'in astonishing result in Hastings. Strictly within the limits of the borough boundary, the rebuilding of chimneys and repairs to roofs will cost at the absolute minimum £90,000. The rebuilding or repairing of the three freezing works will cost probably £200,000 at least. . It would not be in the slightest degree an exaggeration to say that among I the business premises the proportion of total destruction cither at the time of, the earthquake or in the way of future necessity before rebuilding can be gone on with, is 90 per cent. The- following arc a few of the buildings in the condition specified, with estimates of their value on a replacement basis:—Grand Hotel, £43,----000; Roach's, Ltd., £25,000; Union Bank, £15,000; National Bank, £25,----000; Cosy Theatre, £30,000; Municipal Theatre, £20,000. Those are nothing more than instances and arc not quoted as representing the bulk of the town's loss in business premises of entire blocks. Not a sound wall is left in the outskirts of the borough, and the losses at Havelock North will add many thousands to the total. According to the 1930 Year Book the capital value of the land and improvements of Napier is £4,424,000, and of Hastings £3,321,000. The losses of stock in the shops will be enormous. There is also the indirect loss by the suspension of business to consider, yet, the Hastings residents speak in gratitude that their experience was not so disastrous as Napier's.