RAGING TORRENTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 June 1938, Page 9

RAGING TORRENTS

CLOUDBURST IN TARANAKI DISTRICT. GOODS TRAIN DERAILED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) NEW PLYMOUTH, June 11. Road and rail facilities in CentralTaranaki were disrupted during the early hours of this morning by raging torrents when creeks and rivers burst their banks following a cloudburst. The main road from New Plymouth to Inglewood was buried feet deep for a quarter of a mile with swamp grass, slimy mud, and huge logs. Ballast was torn away from beneath the railway line two miles north of Tariki, and the highway to Stratford near that point was cut half away and escaped total destruction only by a miracle. A goods train running through at night to New Plymouth from Wanganui was derailed at a spot where a washout-out had occured on the line. Fortunately the engine kept to the track and neither the driver nor fireman was injured, but through traffic was impossible for many hours till the wreckage was cleared and the damaged track repaired and built up sufficiently to let trains through at a minimum speed. In the meantime passengers on through trains were conveyed past the affected part of the line in buses. So serious was the wash-out that tragedy might easily have occurred.

All the rivers rose many feet in the night and th'e low-lying country for miles around Inglewood was one huge sheet of water. Everywhere mud and debris littered the countryside. As far as could be ascertained today there was little destruction of stock.

The rain storm spread over an area which included most of the province, bu.t, fortunately, the cloudbust was restricted to the smaller area where the damage was done.