The night before the devastating event, the family of Charles Haszard (Te Wairoa schoolmaster), along with guests Harry Lundius and surveyor John Blythe spent a pleasant evening celebrating the birthday of Amelia, Charles’ wife, before retiring to bed at 11pm.
Two hours later the sleeping household was abruptly awakened by a loud rumbling, deep within the centre of the earth, followed by a series of shakes. Alarmed, they rushed outside to behold a “large inky black cloud hovering over the truncated cone of Tarawera with lightning and balls of fire shooting out of it”.
Fearing for their lives, each hurriedly dressed and gathered for comfort in the sitting room which, as it was constructed of corrugated iron, they believed it would provide a haven.
It had grown increasing cold, so for heat and luminosity a fire was lit in the stove, even though outside presented a terrifying spectacle “like a great sheet of fire and flames”. Amelia sat in the middle of the room hugging her children, while eldest daughter Clara played hymn music on the organ to which the group sang along. At 3am, “a rattling of black scoria” fell on the roof, like a heavy hailstorm, forcing them to cease singing as it was impossible to be heard above the terrifying pandemonium.
Other Pākehā residing at Te Wairoa gathered at McRae’s hotel. Amongst the group were Joseph McRae, Mr and Mrs Humphries (owner of Terrace Hotel), Mr Minnett, Edwin Bainbridge, Mr Falloon, (local storekeeper), George Baker (cook at the Rotomahana Hotel), Mary Kean and Mary Bridan (hotel maids), and John and William Bird (brothers-in-law of McRae).
When the volcanic activity began, several residents ran from the hotel up the hill to watch Mt Tarawera “belching out fire and lava hundreds of feet high”. Within 20 minutes they returned, extremely agitated and fearing for their lives. For protection, the group decided to gather in the smoking room situated on the bottom floor of the two-storey building.
Suddenly molten blobs of scoria began to pound on the roof, causing every windowpane to break. As the intense battering progressed, under the volume of scoria and mud “with a loud smash the upper storey collapsed”. Filled with dread, residents tried unsuccessfully to reach the newer portion of the hotel and were forced to the veranda, whereupon they heard “a fearful crash and roar as if thousands of tons of stuff were falling” – the back part of the hotel had collapsed.
Faced by the possibility of being buried alive and the ensuing danger of dancing fireballs which “dashed over and through the building”, they were forced to flee into the night. Having no form of light except for that “afforded by the lightning and fireballs, which rendered the intervals of darkness more intense”, they had to grope their way “in total darkness”.
Above the crashing of the hotel and the roar of the volcano, McRae could be heard shouting, “for God’s sake get out of this and make for Sophia’s” (Guide Sophia Hinerangi’s whare). Later, McRae described their journey, “It was so dark we could not see a yard before us and we directed our way by instinct, calling to one another frequently to ascertain our relative positions.”
At length the desperate party reached the whare, except for Bainbridge who during the escape was struck by a fireball and killed. Beneath the sagging raupō roof in Sophia’s small whare clustered 62 people, praying and comforting each other – miraculously they all survived.
Towns throughout the middle of the North Island reported the effects of the massive eruption. At Rotorua, postmaster Roger Dansey described the overall effect as “booming like thunder, coupled with the roaring of two active craters, the sulphurous stench and continual quaking of the earth”. Families in Rotorua, he wrote, were “forced to leave in their nightdresses with whatever they could seize in their hurry and make for Tauranga”. He feared for the lives of the “people of [Te] Wairoa and all the natives round Lake Tarawera”.
The following day, newspapers reported that the schoolmaster Haszard, his young nephew and two of his children, Adolphus and Edna, had been killed. Amelia Haszard was found alive, pinned by a beam, cradling the body of her youngest child Mona, who had slowly suffocated.
Amelia was dug out by McRae who, in the face of extreme adversity, indefatigably searched for survivors. Amelia’s two eldest daughters, including Clara, were rescued by Harry Lindius. More than 100 people perished during the eruption.
As soon as it was light, those who had escaped the torment, stepped into an unrecognisable landscape. The earth was covered by a metre of blue-grey mud while here and there the ridges of roofs and bare branches jutted like gaunt skeletons, up through the ground. Significantly the famed Pink and White Terraces no longer existed - nature had effectively destroyed its own magnificent creation in a perverse vent of anger.
