MUD ERUPTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 121, 24 May 1941, Page 11

MUD ERUPTION

ACTIVITY AT WHAKA

MANY PEOPLE AWAKENED

Hot mud was thrown to a height of 50ft when a mud geyser erupted at Whakarewarewa early on Thursday morning, states a Rotorua correspondent. After playing for two hours it subsided, leaving an area of about four square chains splattered in sticky mud with a crater in the centre. The outbreak was in a vacant section by Guide Georgina's house at the entrance to the reserve at Whakarewarewa.

Residents in the pa and houses surrounding the Geyser Hotel were awakened about 5.30 a.m. by a continued trembling of the ground, accompanied by a sound described as similar to distant gunfire or to the noise of a Diesel engine. This continued for almost an hour.

Many people left their beds to try to discover the source of the disturbance, but it was not until dawn that the mud geyser was seen to be throwing great quantities of grey mud and water high into the air. The force of the eruption decreased, until by the middle of the morning there was not the slightest sign of activity from the crater. MUD OVER RADIUS OF A CHAIN. Evidence of the disturbance was seen by a great number of visitors attracted to the scene during the day in the mud which covered the ground and undergrowth thickly for a radius of a chain from the crater. There were also a few splashes of mud on the walls of a building about 100 ft away in which some of the staff of the nearby hotel had been sleeping.

The height to which the mud was } thrown was indicated by splashes on the topmost branches of a 50ft gum tree close to the centre of the disturbance. PEOPLE PREPARED TO LEAVE. Although activity in the Whakarewarewa reserve and at Arikikapakapa is constantly changing, this is the largest outburst within the memory of all but the oldest Maoris there, and it is certainly the first time that violent thermal activity has occurred so close to any of the houses. In some cases houses have had to be shifted because of the gradual crumbling of the ground due to the encroachment, of hot pools and steam vents, but there has on these ocasions been a warning of a change of activity.

"I did not like to think what had happened or what would happen next," said Guide Georgina. "I dressed and switched on all the lights in the house and opened the front door ready for an emergency. Other nearby residents also prepared to make hurried exits, but by noon the excitement had subsided and the manifestations of thermal activity were regarded as quite in the normal course of events."