Kōrero: Historic earthquakes

Ron Russell was manager of the Edgecumbe dairy factory in 1987. He describes watching these huge milk storage silos being shaken down.

Transcript

Everything was flying around in my office and the place was still shaking very violently and I put my hands up on the concrete window sill and pulled myself up both hands and looked out the window in time to see the ground rolling, the concrete rolling like a wave in the ? And the waves were going towards the protein factory and there's five big stainless steel silos there. Huge ones, 225 thousand litre capacity, and the wave hit that and there was an empty silo and the sides of the silo went in and out half a metre they just went all the way up the silo and it stayed put, but the one next door was full of milk and the shock hit that and the whole silo just toppled over and crashed to the ground and all the milk came out. And the next one did the same and there was one right in the corner and it was full of treated demineralised water, and it just buckled at the knees and toppled over and hit the energy centre and smashed all the wall and on the energy centre and then hit the ground and the top came off it just like a can being opened and this huge slug of water twenty five feet and diameter just came out like a cork, out of the silo, and went across the yard. And I was still trying to pull myself up and I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and the chimney was waving on the stack of the drier and I looked out the other way and all the people that are assembled between the warehouse and the back of the laboratory, from the laboratory and warehouse group. There was about 30 people there and they were all just rolling on the ground and some of the people were spread eagle completely out with their hands out flat and their feet out trying to steady themselves but they're laying flat on the ground screaming. And the noise was terrible because when all this stuff was falling over and rumbling and everything the silos were crashing behind the factory and they demolished all the steam lines and of course they went off like great cannons. Six-inch diameter steam lines with 250 psi of steam and it just got broken clean in half with the weight of the silos falling on them. And it was like a warzone that the noise was unforgettable.