Editorial: Names not lost through the cracks

Devastion left by the 1931 Napier earthquake showing buildings reduced to rubble in the Napier township commercial area.

It is a simple list of names, but it has profound significance.

On page six today, we have run the updated list of names of the identified victims of the 1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake.

As a tribute to those who lost their lives 85 years ago today, we have printed their names.

Sydney-based company Ancestry' research team, with assistance from the MTG, compiled this list, which has been released exclusively to Hawke's Bay Today.

It makes for poignant reading. I am sure some names mean a lot to many people - they are ancestors, in some cases parents and grandparents. Some of our readers will not recognise any name, but that does not lessen the impact of the event on this region.

There are no relations to me in that list, but I did note that one of the names was Mrs Laura England (nee Austin). As her maiden name was the same as my surname, I was immediately interested. My family tree did not, in the 1930s, extend to New Zealand, but the list did get me thinking about this woman's life and the lives of all the others.

Each one of them would have been like any one of us - living lives with ups and downs, but each with a story to tell. The list contains maiden names of some of the married women and quite a number of nicknames for the men, from Billy to Lofty. It also covers all spectrums of society.

It is a list that captures a significant moment in time. All these years on, it must still be fresh in the minds of the few quake victims alive.

The Canterbury earthquakes affected New Zealand deeply and even for those of us not directly touched by them, it gave us an insight into these forces of nature.

To look at the photographs of the devastation of Napier and the fiery damage to Hastings, gives one a sense of what it must have been like to have survived or lost loved ones in 1931.

Whatever the connection, even if it is that we simply shared the same part of the world, I am sure that many of us will stop for a moment and reflect on the quake 85 years ago.