Yesterday was 22nd February and the fifth anniversary of the Christchurch February earthquake.
It was also Lily's eighth birthday!
On Sunday I went to Palmerston with the Red Cross Disaster Welfare and Support Team to do a training on Psychological First Aid. The trainers were from Christchurch and it was obvious the 5.7 earthquake Sunday week ago (14th Feb 2016) had re-traumatized them.
Some time ago I wrote about earthquakes in the context of William and Betsy's history and I have reproduced it below. Unless it is a blog it will never see the light of day!
These Shaky
Isles
Did William
and Betsy have any idea what they were going to as they left “this green and
pleasant land?”
Or was what
they were leaving worth running away from?
What was the
Wellington of the 1840s like?
Wellington’s
foreshore was very different from today. There were the Pas at Te Aro, Maori
potato gardens on the Thorndon Hills, bush to the waters edge and bird life
that held the immigrants enthralled.
The New
Zealand Company had rudimentary accommodation for their assisted passengers and
others had canvas tents or slab cottages with thatched roofs. The more well- to- do had substantial homes, some of which had been brought from England on the
sailing ships in a prefabricated form.
“Sometimes
it does us a power of good to remind ourselves that we live on two volcanic
rocks where two tectonic plates meet, in a somewhat lonely stretch of windswept
ocean just above the Roaring Forties. If
you want drama- you have come to the right place.”[1]
Within six
years of arriving, William and Betsy and their family of eight comprising Mary,
John, Amelia, Mark (6) Margaret (1) and Elizabeth Eliza (4 months) ,
experienced their first BIG earthquake…the Marlborough 7.5 quake that happened
at 1.40 in the morning of 16th April 1848 in a gale and torrential
rain. Imagine the frightening experience with no electricity, radios or
emergency bucket!
All the
brick buildings in Wellington suffered damage and the chimneys in the wooden
houses fell down so the family would have had to cook outside until they were
rebuilt.
The same
thing happened in the 1931 Napier earthquake fortunately in February so cooking
outside would have been like having barbecues every day! But the fires that
were going in the cooking ranges in Hawkes Bay when the Napier earthquake
struck were the cause of lots of the
fires that devastated Napier and Hastings. The water mains were disrupted
so there was no water to fight the fires.
Most of
Wellington was rebuilt in wood. The Government Building which is now the Victoria University Law School was the
largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere at one stage. Elizabeth had
law lectures in that beautiful building. The timber was totara from Nireaha where we
lived from 1977-1985 . Nireaha was the bottom end of the Seventy Mile Bush and
the Scandinavian settlers practised their native skills milling timber from the
dense native bush. Old timers recounted to us how when they were children you
could walk from the school to the Nireaha Bridge by leaping from stump to stump
never stepping onto the earth!
The Maori
population of Wellington declined rapidly after the New Zealand Company
acquired Wellington from Te Puni and Te Wharepouri in 1839. Maori outnumbered
Europeans but within a year when the first influx of ships arrived, ,”Tory”,
“Cuba”, “Aurora”, “Oriental”, “Duke of Roxburgh”, “Adelaide”, “Bolton”,
“Coromandel” (all in 1840) the
population was then 1200 Europeans living alongside 800 Maori around Port
Nicholson.
The table
below shows how the population of Maori declined within the next two years.
Census of the native
population, Port Nicholson (Poneke), July 1, 1842
(Canterbury “Times,” on Old N.Z.):—
Men.
|
Wm.
|
Boys.
|
Girls.
|
||
Kaiwharawhara
|
31
|
22
|
5
|
2
|
60
|
Kumutoto
|
10
|
4
|
1
|
—
|
15
|
Nga-Uranga
|
18
|
22
|
7
|
1
|
48
|
Pipitea
|
59
|
43
|
13
|
19
|
134
|
Pito-one
|
47
|
39
|
5
|
6
|
97
|
Te Aro
(Taranaki)
|
50
|
30
|
13
|
—
|
93
|
Te Aro
(Ngataruanui)
|
16
|
8
|
11
|
—
|
35
|
Waiwhetu
|
23
|
22
|
13
|
1
|
59
|
Total:
541
|
By 1857 only 63 Maori lived in the town of
Wellington. Tribal skirmishes and dispossession of customary land led to the
diaspora of the original occupants.
The purchase
of the Maori land in Wellington was dubious with the New Zealand Company laying
their plan of Town Acre sections over land that was inhabited by Maori who
hadn’t relinquished their tenure, and
over their gardens and food gathering sites. A tenth of the area “acquired”
was set aside for Maori and the area was ringed by what became known as “The
Town Belt”
At the time
of the 1848 earthquake there were 4,750 immigrants living in Wellington , a 25%
increase on the estimated 3701 living in
Wellington when William arrived with his family[2]
Did the
earthquakes cause the Maori population to disperse? The Christchurch
earthquakes of 4 September 2010 and 22 Feb 2011 led to Statistics New Zealand
reporting a net population loss of 8,900 or 2.4% to June 2011….but anecdotely
the numbers of trademen coming to rebuild Christchurch will boost the
population again.
Some of the
early settlers to Wellington took refuge on ships in the harbour after the 1848
earthquake; and some even decided to keep going . On 26th October 60
settlers set sail on the “Subraon” for Sydney. But they hit the rocks on the
way out of the harbour and were shipwrecked (none died)…. Imagine how they must
have felt to have gathered up what they had left of their belongings, hopped on
a ship to get away from the earthquakes and the aftershocks only to be rescued
from the tide with less than they had before!
And then
believe it or not just when the township was booming the 1855 earthquake
struck. This one is now known as the 8.2
Wairarapa Earthquake and it struck on the summer evening of 23rd
January at 9.17 pm. It was a windy evening after the Races that were run as
part of a very long holiday weekend celebrating the 15th anniversary
of the new settlement.
The day
before on the Monday there had been a whale boat race won by Bethune and
Hunter’s “Waterwitch”
The races
were held on a race track formed on the sand banks around Burnham Water on the
Miramar Peninsula. Burnham Water and the Basin were two of the areas in
Wellington which were changed irrevocably after the 1855 earthquake.[3]
Some reports
recall the continuous shaking for three days and three nights.Before the
earthquake the forest grew right to the waters edge and afterwards some parts
of the foreshore were raised eight feet.
One
consequence of this was the uplifting of the swampy (and oft flooded) Hutt
River mouth and the area around the base of the hills between Thorndon and
Petone. Before natures gift of a rail
and road route between these two cities, the travelling public had to sail or
be rowed between the two points on the harbour. The little boats were often
swamped and drownings weren’t infrequent.
Once
again the wooden buildings largely withstood the violent shaking of the earth.
A tsunami was generated with waves of up
to 10 metres. The Commander of the “Pandora” that was anchored in the harbour
recounted how for eight hours the tide approached and receded from the shore
every 20 minutes , rising from 8 to 10 feet and then receding 4 feet lower than
a spring tide.
Grandpa Noel
remembers his grandfather (John Thomas Bird ; William's eldest son) telling of bullock teams
on the foreshore in Wellington jumping up and down with the movement of the
earth.
It was about
this time that John was working for George Hunter (son of
the first Mayor of Wellington) on his farm at Island Bay. The farm stretched
from there almost to the Basin reserve. George had bought a farm, sight unseen at Porangahau and John made the
journey north with Bill Storrah taking the first mob of cattle along the coast
to Porangahau.
The journey
would have been an adventure getting the animals along the coast past landfalls
and uplifted coastline that had in parts lifted 2.7 metres (9 feet) especially
along the route to Cape Palliser and then on up to CastlePoint.
Another
story Grandpa Noel tells is of how John defended himself against an aggressive
bull seal by throwing a tomahawk at it…"he never saw his axe again”!
Between 1913
and 1926 the New Zealand Official Yearbook included a comment that “earthquakes
in New Zealand are rather a matter of scientific interest than a subject for
alarm”
How memories
do fade!
There
followed the 17 June 1929 Murchison Earthquake of 7.8 when 17 people died. Then
closer to home the 3rd February 1931 7.8 Napier Earthquake when 256
people were killed and many more injured.
Grandpa Noel
was at school at St Josephs, Waipukurau ,that morning and the school bell was
rung late to go inside from playtime. If it had rung earlier the
collapsing façade of the school would have squashed him and his playmates.
I went to
stay with Aunty Margaret in Wellington for the May holidays in 1959. I can
still remember getting on board the Hastings aircraft at Whenuapai. Two
momentous things happened on that holiday. Aunty Margaret took me to the
Wellington Show at the Show Buildings and I had my first encounter with nuns. I
squeezed up to a viewing spot to look at dyed chickens hatching under lights
and as I turned to come away these two black robed women grabbed me and forced
me through the crowd back up the way I had come thinking they were helping no
doubt. It was nearly as terrifying as the first earthquake I had felt, a
magnitude 6 on 22 May.
The Wellington Show buildings are on the site of the home of Betsy and William on the Town Belt.
On 23rd
May 1960 (Gran Stewart and Josephines birthday) there was a humungous 9.5 earthquake
in Chile and a resulting tsunami causing damage to the New Zealand coast. For
many years Gran Stewart had a barnacle
that had been retrieved off the HMS Buffalo. As the tides receded unwary locals
had raced their tractors down Buffalo Beach (Whitianga) in front of what was
the Hospital and tried to drag up the remains of the wreck that foundered in a
storm on 28 July 1840 in Mercury Bay while loaded with Kauri spars.
Uncle Bruce
(Lynnes father) was reported in the paper as having flounder on his front lawn
at Whitianga
Then there
was the 24 May 1968 Inangahua 7.1 when 3
people lost their lives.
In 1990 Weber was
the epicentre for a large earthquake. The local geology of the area magnified
the effect making the earthquake seem worse than it was. It is known locally as
the 'Mother's day' quake
News Item 13 May 1990 Weber II
earthquake:
At 4:23 pm on Mother’s Day, 13 May 1990, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the southern Hawke’s Bay near Weber, east of Dannevirke. It was just 10 kilometres from the epicentre of a magnitude 6.1 Mw earthquake on 19 February, a few months earlier. Some houses were cracked, or knocked off their foundations. Many buildings in Dannevirke had broken windows and cracked chimneys. At Cape Kidnappers, a group of about ten people walking along the shore had a near miss when a large slip from the coastal cliffs fell near them. Within 24 hours of the main earthquake, there were 7 aftershocks of magnitude 5 Mw or greater
At 4:23 pm on Mother’s Day, 13 May 1990, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the southern Hawke’s Bay near Weber, east of Dannevirke. It was just 10 kilometres from the epicentre of a magnitude 6.1 Mw earthquake on 19 February, a few months earlier. Some houses were cracked, or knocked off their foundations. Many buildings in Dannevirke had broken windows and cracked chimneys. At Cape Kidnappers, a group of about ten people walking along the shore had a near miss when a large slip from the coastal cliffs fell near them. Within 24 hours of the main earthquake, there were 7 aftershocks of magnitude 5 Mw or greater
We owned the farm at Porangahau at
the time of the February 1990 quake (the epicentre was very close to the house), after
which the manager moved out into
a neighbouring house because his wife wouldn’t stay in the house... The house
had shaken so much she couldn’t walk up the hall to get to her new baby. When
the Mothers Day quake struck, the empty house (and woolshed and shearers
quarters) were shaken off their piles and twisted to bits. It’s another
tortuous story but eventually we replaced all the buildings with a new
transportable home for the manager.
The 2010 Christchurch earthquake did not result in loss of life but the relief from escaping tragedy was replaced by incredible grief when the 22 February 2011 6.3 Christchurch earthquake on the unknown Greendale Fault took 185 lives.
 |
| Front veranda suspended |
 |
| Front of house suspended over fallen piles |
The 2010 Christchurch earthquake did not result in loss of life but the relief from escaping tragedy was replaced by incredible grief when the 22 February 2011 6.3 Christchurch earthquake on the unknown Greendale Fault took 185 lives.
So now we are all
so much more aware of being prepared for a disaster, but do memories fade
still?
William and Betsy
would have had their cow and vege garden so they would have had their emergency
supplies in the back yard.
Today I went to a Red cross Branch meeting and we were told that the Fiji Red Cross have shelter for 17,000 evacuees pre positioned around their country. The cyclone season is upon us and Cyclone Winston that hit over the weekend is the strongest recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. An Air Force Hercules has been loaded with supplies from the New Zealand Red Cross's Warehouse in Auckland and will be on it's way. International Aid for disaster relief has changed recently after the Australian bush fires and floods , and the Christchurch earthquakes. National self sufficiency is hugely strong and international aid is more in the field of IT technology , water and sanitation and relief once national Teams are needing a break.
Emergency preparedness is a responsibility of all of us.
Do you keep the top half of your petrol tank full and have cash on hand?
