TWELVE DAYS’ RAIN.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 466, 26 April 1890, Page 5

TWELVE DAYS’ RAIN.

, INCIDENTS OF THE DOWNPOUR. MANGARE FLAX-MILL SWEPT AWAY. GORDON’S FLAX-MILL SWAMPED. (“ Northern Advocate.”) The rain which was steadily fallingthroughout last week showed signs of exhaustion on Saturday, and during the afternoon there was a series of fitful lulls. Bub the celestial reservoir was by no means playedout. The tap was turned on once more on Saturday night and Sunday was damp, dreary and depressing. That night the rain increased in volume, and Monday morning found it coming down in a regular torrent, which glutted all the creeks and watercourses to abnormal proportions and applied a severe test to culverts and bridges. The large embankment near Mr North’s, on the Mangapai Road, was completely burst through, leaving a yawning chasm in the roadway about 15tt wide and 10ft deep. The immediate cause was the choking of the water pipes, which were pub down some 14 years ago by the Maunu Road Board. On Monday morning the lower end of Bank-street presentedquito a flooded aspect through the culvert pipes at the corner of Maungatapere-streeto getting choked up. From that corner all along the western side of the thoroughfare down nearly bo the railway-crossing there was a broad sheet of water extending right to the centre of the roadway. The Messrs Edge Bros., who came through from the Wairiki side of the Puhipuhi on Sunday night, brought news that acres of fallen and drift timber had been piled up against the bridge leading from Evan Finlayson’s up the Kaimamuku, and that they had in consequence to swim that river, besides several swollen creeks. Whitelaw and D. Cleary’s fiaxmill on the Mangare River was reported to have been bodily swept away on Tuesday morning, along with two tons of dressed fibre which was stored inside the building, besides a lob of flax which was spread out in the neighbouring paddock. It seems that a tremendous body of water backed up at the mill and at last tore away everything that obstructed its progress. Everything went down the river—machinery, water-wheel, building, and flax. The current was like a mill-race. Mr D. Cleary says he has lost < half-a-year’s labour, The loss by the mill, ( irrespective of the flax, is set down at £250.

About the same time Mr Gordon’s flaxmill at the junction of the Wairua and Mangakaliia rivers was completely swamped, the boiler being buried beneath 16ffc of water, and the flood still rising. Three tons of dressed flax were carried away by the impetuous current. At Leca’s store on the Wairua, the flood was up to the wall-plates on Tuesday morning and was still rising. At Apotu, on the other side of Kaurihohore, the flood wa3 the highest experienced since the memorable one of 1873. As we mentioned last week, Mr Forsyth’s 500-acre farm was nearly all inundated, just 30 acres surrounding the homestead being left uncovered. As a measure of precaution he eenb his cattle in to Kamo, One can now pull a boat over his wire fence. All the flat land between Hukerenui and Hikurangi was reported to be under water on Wednesday, and Mr Tom Ellis came over in a boat from Jordan to Messrs McLeod Bros.’ paddocks at Hikui'angi. Ellis is said to be meditating the starting of a ferry service. About 20,000 acres of the lowlands of Hukerenui and Hikurangi lie under a sheet of water from lfb to 20fb wide. The bridge over the Wairua at the Jordan settlement has entirely disappeared from view. At Maunu the storm water from the mountain scooped out a hole about a chain wide and ten feet deep in Mr Seccombe’s paddock, while at C. Hawken’s, lower down, it washed the earth from the paddock level with the stone wall which bounds the road.

The rosd to Waipu remains open, but that to Ivawakawa is closed beyond Eru Nehua’s. and as a consequence there has been no communication. The coach did not go through as usual on Saturday nor did it venture on Wednesday last. At Kawakawa, we learn by wire, the rains have flooded the entire country-side, and all traffic and business is at a standstill, while the coal mines have stopped work. The railway line between Opua and Kawakawa is covered with three and four feet of water in several places, and about a mile of it has been washed away, thus interrupting the railway service. Repairs were expected to be completed by Thursday. Many country bridges, too, have been swept away. Even the lower part of Swift’s Hotel, in Kawakawa township, is reported to be two feet under water.

Fortunately for the miners of Puhipuhi, while all other means of access are closed to them the air-line route to Whangarei, so recently cut by public subscription and voluntary labour and entirely without Government aid, remains open and stands demonstrated as the only passable road in or out during heavy rains.