The contents of The Duke Hotel’s office shelves ended up on the floor as earthquakes and aftershocks shook the village on Wednesday. Photo / Rachel Wise
The contents of The Duke Hotel’s office shelves ended up on the floor as earthquakes and aftershocks shook the village on Wednesday. Photo / Rachel Wise
When earthquakes began to shake cyclone-ravaged Pōrangahau last Wednesday morning, Angela and Ahuriri Houkamau, owners of the historic The Duke Hotel in the village, weren’t home.
They were in Waipukurau picking up supplies for the pub - but they still felt the shaking.
“We were sitting in our truck on the main street and it got jolted repeatedly. At first, I thought someone had hit us, then I realised it was an earthquake.”
Shortly afterwards son Robert, who was at the hotel, sent through a video of the contents of the pub’s office - and the fridge - on the floor.
The small community is no stranger to fear since homes and businesses were destroyed and lives were threatened by flooding during Cyclone Gabrielle in February.
Bottles toppled in The Duke’s chiller during the first of the quakes. Photo / Rachel Wise
Robert, sitting in the office on the top floor when the first of the quakes hit, said: “It was pretty intense. For the first few seconds, I thought, ‘What’s going on?’ Then I grabbed the computers and held them in place until it got to the point where I was thinking - ‘Do I stay here or do I go?’”
“I wasn’t sure it was going to stop - it was the biggest earthquake I’ve ever felt. It went on for maybe 30 seconds, then there was a short break and away it went again, twice more.”
When the shaking had stopped, Robert walked to the Pōrangahau Hall, one of the evacuation stations in the village.
There, many members of the beach community had gathered, including pupils from nearby Pōrangahau School.
“I think about 20 per cent of the beach community had evacuated to the hall,” Robert estimates. “We are well-versed in tsunami protocol, living where we do.”
The first couple of shakes triggered a small landslide on Mangaorapa Road. Photo / Rachel Wise
It was the threat of a tsunami that had brought the villagers to the hall.
Robert says, “We have just had a cyclone, flooding, an earthquake, and I was thinking... ‘What’s going to happen now, a tsunami?’ We have had enough natural disasters.”
Along with the school pupils, the community members awaited a message from Civil Defence to say any danger of a tsunami was over.
Pōrangahau School principal Julie Scandrett says the children coped with the emergency evacuation extremely well.
“We followed our normal procedures. We practice earthquake, fire and evacuation drills regularly, so it’s second nature to the children to get under the tables and cover up in an earthquake. The teachers got into the doorways.
“Once it was safe to move, we all walked to the hall, where the children had a snack and we waited for the all-clear.
“The school is just on the border of the tsunami zone, so we practice until we all know what to to, and we do it well. We’re lucky to have two parents who are emergency services workers, so they came and checked on us. The Ministry of Education was in touch very quickly and we posted on Facebook to let whānau know that we had evacuated and were safe,” Julie says.
NZ Post rural delivery driver Pauline Signal has become used to navigating cyclone-damaged roads on her Pōrangahau mail run, but on returning from delivering to Mangaorapa Road, she came across boulders on the road she was sure hadn’t been there when she drove up the same road, just minutes before.
“I flicked the radio on and caught something about Pōrangahau, and how coastal people needed to move immediately. By then I was on the main street of Pōrangahau, so I rang my daughter, who lives at the beach, and asked her, ‘Has there been an earthquake or something?”
“She said, “Yes, and it was terrible.”
“The rest of my round, I was to hear stories of TVs falling from walls, things crashing from shelves, fridges and fire surrounds falling, ranch sliders flinging open and shut... and I hadn’t felt a thing.”
Geonet recorded 41 quakes in the three hours since the severe 5.9 jolt, centred at Pōrangahau, struck at 10.16am.
