‘Then the world collapsed, or exploded. I knew not what was happening as I had never experienced an earthquake. Where grandad had been resting a minute before, a huge wardrobe crashed down. The noise of chimney bricks smashing onto the roof was alarming.’ Donald Locke remembers the Napier earthquake of 1931.
For people who lived through the Napier earthquake of 3 February 1931, the moment the big shake arrived became indelibly sketched on the memory. But for most people the quake was only the beginning. There followed days of looking after the injured, dealing with rubble and sometimes fire, and long nights of personal anxiety. Aftershocks continued for weeks.
We invited people from around New Zealand to send in their memories of the earthquake. Here is a selection.
What's your story?
A mother’s story
Eleanor Edith Kay proudly holds her son Bevan in 1930. The next year when the big earthquake struck, they were at home at Hospital Hill, Napier. Eleanor’s other sons, Robin and Geoff, were at the Napier Central School. Her husband Harold, a farm inspector, was on his way to Gisborne. A few days later, Eleanor wrote to her sisters in Christchurch from The Vicarage in Woodville, where the family had moved for safety.
A rush to the playground
Norma Wing is dressed in her best at Marton, the year before the Napier earthquake. At the time of the quake eight-year-old Norma was a pupil at Hastings Street Primary School, Napier. The new school year had only just started.
Long way home
Ray Copland wears the school’s dux medal on prizegiving day at Napier’s Nelson Park School, December 1930. A few weeks later, on his first day at Napier Boys’ High School, he had to find his way home through fires and rubble.
On the farm
Donald Locke on his first day at school in July 1931. Earlier that year he was staying on his grandfather’s farm at Fern Hill, some 10 kilometres north-west of Hastings, in an area now planted in grapes.