The surges of the May 1960 Chile tsunami flooded Gisborne Harbour, and did widespread damage around the surrounding coast.
Don Ross, harbour master at Whitianga, describes the effects of the tsunami.
Transcript
The tidal wave would've been a thing you never forget, cos the night it happened you couldn't believe it unless you'd actually seen it, but just on dusk a chap came round - a bloke that used to frequent the hotels and that normally - but he come down, he said, you wanna go and see what's happening the river, the boats are going up and down and you know he said there's a terrific big sea in the river. And I said, oh, you've been drinking Deacon and he said, no, no, he said you come and have a look and cos I went down, I couldn't believe my eyes. Every boat had nearly every boat had broken its mooring and it hadn't hit they pulled the decks out of the boat so the bollards and all pull a bit of deck out or said they'd broken their moorings and were just going up and down, you know, it was 20 minutes I think between tides about 20 minutes so you can imagine them out of water.
So because of being Harbour Master they expected me to try and rescue some of the people, people were in boats trying to get their boats off and it was that bad that the fishermen would wait till the tide surged out and instead of rowing out to the boats like I have to in the stream they would run out and jump on board. And you know, and of course they tried to get their boats out of the bay and get it safe out at sea or further around when they thought they'd better not face it out to sea, so they went to one the outside bays. A lot of the fishermen and hung out there.
But the surge was so great that it actually unearthed machinery and that that had been dump perhaps away in early 1800s, it was exposed it was like big wheels out of mills and chain and all sorts of gear. It took the sand, it took everything and when the tide went out when it went right out, there was only a stream left in the middle where you could nearly walk across the river.
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Reference: 15040
Image: Tairawhiti Museum, 811-1
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