IN RABAUL ERUPTION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 139, 29 June 1937, Page 13

IN RABAUL ERUPTION

— Press Assooiation.)

Advenfcist Pastor Relates Experiences

(By Teleeraph

AUCKLAND, Last Night. "We are done, finished. We can go no further." Fainting women collapsed and men struggled in the darknegs almost smothered in smoking ash, while natives eried; "Jesu" in a prayer for help. This was the seene. on one of the xoads out of Rabaul on the night oi the eruption as told in an interview to-day by Pastor A. G. Stewart, vice-president pf the Australian Union Conference of Seventh Day Adventists, a passenger by the Monterey, who is the first arrival in New Zealand sjnce. the disaster. He was taken iu O, refuge ship by air liner. Pastor Stewart said that after a twq luonths' visit to mission statipns in Papua aad New Gninea be had gathered the European missionariea together at the mipsion headquarters on the island of Matnpi fOr a convention, When they arrived by schoonpr on Friday, May 28, they learnqd that the place had been violently shaken by an .earthquake an hour before. Tankg had burst and water supplies had been lost. The followiug morning tho 'quakos began at daybreak and continued until 4.25 in tho afternoon, Then ocourred a tromendous upheaval from the volcano on Vulcan Island about a mile from the mission across the harbour. "'People were" crossing from Rabaul to M&tupi Island," he said, "to view another crater there which had- been smOuldering for a few years but had Temained undisturbed until Sunday, the 30th, at noon. Then it, too, went up in a violent eruptioo. Ash wae hurled thou* sands of feot and smoke reached to va j hoight of probably 15,000 feet in an j cnormous black cloud. , •'Right then I thought of my camera and took several hundred feet of film before starting froin Rabaul- in * car with three missionaties to get ont of range ef the approaehing rain Of volcano ash which by now was cOvaring lnpre tkan half the harboui' and was rapidly nearing the town. 1 i Pastor Stewaft added that they went to Nordup'where 10,000 people had been taken to a refuge camp on the southeast coast. Hundreds of natives were missing and whole villages were buried. ' Pagtor Stewart will be speaking from 1YA to-inorrow night at 7.30 p.xn,