Mt. Eden Wreckage Rapidly Cleared

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 604, 5 March 1929, Page 1

Mt. Eden Wreckage Rapidly Cleared

BIG GANGS AT WORK BURST-RESERVOIR DEBRIS Though the relief gangs had been working for less than 24 hours, order was being rapidly sorted out of the chaos on Mount Eden this morning. The City Council authorities have lost no time in concentrating their available resources on the job, and remarkable progress has been made. The largest of the unsightly piles of debris on Mount Eden Road near the foot of Hillside Crescent have now disappeared, thanks to the energies of a large gang which worked all day yesterday. The roadway has also been cleaned up as thoroughly as possible, and silt has been removed from the gutters and street-corner depressions. A grass plot at the junction of Hillside Crescent and Mount Eden Road has yet to be attended to. This is still a mass of earth and rubble, including numbers of large stones. VEHICLES BURIED In the Mount Eden Borough dump at the foot of the cliff over which the flood plunged, a start has been made with the big task of releasing the vehicles buried in the half-ruined sheds. It will be some time before the shovelmen with their lorries penetrate to the sheds, as many tons of solid earth and rock have to be cut

through. The mechanical roller, truck and road-sweeper lie buried almost to the tops of the drivers’ cabs. The silt and rock is wedged tightly in the sheds, portions of which have given under the strain, and it is impossible to tell whether or not the vehicles have been damaged to any serious extent. The approach to the garages is still a large and gently-sloping mound of flood deposit out of which the upper portions of the sheds are showing. The workmen are cutting steadily into this mound. Another gang is working on the mount road, which has been cleared of its larger deposits of earth and rock. A retaining-wall of rock has been built round the lower portion of one of the largest wash-outs in the roadway near the bank, and this is being tilled in. FILLING GAPING SCARS In the plantation above the roadway the gaping tears and scars in th esloping turf are being filled in as rapidly as possible. A large num- j her of holes has already been covered and levelled, but the task will be a lengthy one, as many of the gaps are from six to 10ft deep and will require extensive filling and packing. At the dam the measures for temporary relief have been consolidated and a gang of about 20 men is engaged in breaking up the huge slabs of reinforced concrete which were torn from the broken wall by the force of the water. One of these has already been smashed into small pieces which are being carted away in lorries. The breaking-down gang has j also demolished the roof of the ’ reservoir for a considerable distance back from the line of the burst wall in order that all will I be in readiness for the building of the brick retaining-wall. NEW BRICK WALL 1 Bricks for the new wall arrived | this morning and were dumped on the i I site of the new reservoir, the work j j on which appears to have been tern- | ! porarily abandoned. Interviewed by The Sun this morn- I ing, Mr. W. E. Bush, city engineer, j said that the brick wall across the ! gap in the reservoir would be built! in three or four days. It would hold ! about 250,000 gallons of water. He j could give no estimate of the gen- j eral damage done by the rush of water on Monday morning, but could say that the repair work was going : ahead according to schedule- ,