WATER & MUD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1938, Page 6

WATER & MUD

HOUSES & ROADS SILTED IN WELLINGTON FOLLOWING ON HEAVY DOWNPOUR. MANY SLIPS & WASH-OUTS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Heavy rain was experienced in Wellington last night—2.4l inches. Most of it fell between eleven p.m. and 1.30 a.m. Coming on top of the soaking the hills have received for some weeks past, the downpour resulted in slips, wash-outs, flooding and' silting to an extent beyond the experience of the younger generation of Wellington citizens. Slips occurred in nearly every part of the city and suburbs, some of them across tram-lines. One, in Ngaio Gorge, stopped early morning motor traffic. Houses in Sutherland Road, Lyall Bay, were inundated and floors were covered with silt to a depth of over eighteen inches. One of them has the ground washed away from the piles, which are hanging to the joists. Silt, leaves and brushwood covered the road to a depth of many feet and in places motor-cars are silted in more than axle deep. Houses below were also affected, not so badly, however, but water from a different source silted up a residence in the Queen’s Drive/ A big slip came down at the southern corner of Wakefield Park, and another on the Brooklyn Road made it difficult for cars to get through. There was a large slip on a high bank in Adelaide Road, and a house in Wallace Street has been left just on the edge of' the slip. There was much blocking of culverts and drains or their inability to carry the great flood of water was responsible for many wash-outs and some of the slips, and great accumulations of mud are spread inches deep over large areas of the streets all round and about the city.