DEVASTATION IN EARTHQUAKE AREA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3992, 3 September 1929, Page 3

DEVASTATION IN EARTHQUAKE AREA.

VISITORS ASTOUNDED

Westport, August 31.

A representative of the “Westport News” who has just visited Lyell has come back with the impression that nothing that has as yet appeared in the illustrated press or that has been written has adequately described the colossal movements of the great earthquake of June 17. Mention has been made of a road which dropped 14 feet. That is nothing. In one place the road has moved out 25 feet and dropped, 50 feet, carrying with it all telegraph posts which are still standing in line alongside the dropped piece of road. In another place a hill has been bodily moved out on to the, road.

But it is the rock movements that invite special notice. Words and pictures given of land slides have conveyed an impression that the surface was opened up and the spurs and mountain sides cut as if with a great razor. There is more than that, for the rock formation is rent and torn and has descended the hillsides in rivers of rock, some portions of which are of immense size. Beyond Lyell, which was not visited by the “News” representative, is, according to the account of a roadman, a land slide sixty chains in width. •Mir. C. F. Schadick, county engineer, who has been through the Lyell and Karamea districts, brings back a similar story regarding earth movements there. “They are colossal,” be stated. Nothing he has yet seen has given anything like an adequate description of the immense eruptive force that was at work.

It is suggested that with a view to giving the public elsewhere some idea of this great earth movement the shipping companies should ar-* range for an excursion from Wellington to Westport, the Railway Department doing likewise froi* Christchurch to Inangahua Junction. The excursionists could be taken as far as Arnolds, a distance of between six and seven miles and then walk on to Lyell. What they would see would be a revelation to them.