NAPIER ROAD SNOW DAMAGE

Taupo Times, Volume IV, Issue 185, 12 August 1955, Page 1

NAPIER ROAD SNOW DAMAGE

3} Miles Of New Telegraph Line Needed The snow which fell in the Taupo Country on Wednesday and Thursday, July 13 and 14, necessitated the erection of three and a half miles of new telegraph line on the TaupoNapier highway. This work has now been completed by a Post and Telegraph Department party under Mr Claude Knight, the new line being from the vicinity of the Rangitaiki Hotel toward Taupo, following the recently formed highway deviation there. Sixty-four totara telegraph posts came down during the snowfall in the area mentioned. In conversation with the Taupo Times Mr Knight said that on going out from Taupo during the snow storm it w7as noted, in the neighibourhood of the Forestry Oamp knowm as Sixty Bar Eight, that snow7 wms freezing on thc wires and "building up." At that time the wires were about the thickness of a finger. Wires As Thick As Arm Mr Knight had seen this process bring posts down in the South Island, but he had not previously seen the phenomenon in the North Island. As the snowfall continued the lines "built up" more and more, until they were as thick as a man's arm with frozen snow, and the weight proved too much for the totara posts. Some broke off close up to the cross-arms, others near the bottom, where they were bolted to railway iron butts. For some time after the storm the damaged three and a half mile section of line was bridged with insulated wires laid on the ground. Now7 that the new7 line has been erected, the old line material has been salvaged, the good portions of the totara posts being brought into Taupo. Iron Poles Bent To Ground The original copper wire, which had to be replaced with new wire owing to its having been stretched too much by the weight of snow, will. as is the Departmental practice, be

sold as copper scrap. About a mile south of Rangitaiki toward Napier the snow, which on both sides of Rangitaiki was about eight inches deep on the road and plains, "built up" on the lines and brought down five telegraph poles constructed of double railway irons. These were bent down to the ground by the weight of snow frozen on the wires. Damage By Lightning Mr Knight said that the only damage he recalled to the Taupo-Napier telegraph line, that was in any wnay comparable to that done in the reeent snowfall, occurred some 20 years ago, when 15 totara poles some distance south of the Terraces Hotel were destroyed by lightning. In places on that oecasion the lines had been fused in that area and many of the damaged poles had been completely shattered. In several cases it was dilficult to find the remains of them. When this occurred, it was reported that Departmental records showed that some years earlier a number of telegraph posts in the same locality had been similarly struck by lightning. It would appear that in that locality lightning storms passed from the south just east of Tauhara Mountain. Following the second occurrence, a special lightning-arrestor was fitted and earthed to a system of wires surrounding the poles in the locality and huried at a shallow depth in the topsoil. Since then no lightning damage had occurred there.