Matthew Wright: Hawke's Bay quake - part 2

A solitary firefighter is helpless as he stands outside the destroyed Masonic Hotel. Picture / Alexander Turnbull Library

As Napier struggled to comprehend the enormity of the earthquake, a second wave of devastation came from another force of nature - fire. In this second extract from his revised book Quake - Hawkes Bay 1931, historian Matthew Wright recounts the catastrophe.

Chemist R. S. Munro, managing the Friendly Society dispensary at the lower end of Emerson St, returned to his shop minutes after the quake to find the twisted building on fire.

The brigade, with its four permanent and 25 volunteer firemen, was not far away - the new fire station stood just one block distant, its alarm bells clanging after a short-circuit had set them off.

The station broadly withstood the shake, but the earthquake rolled the heavy No 1 Dennis engine through the wooden doors, almost crushing E. E. Symons in the process and jamming the starting handle in a tangle of broken wood. It was some minutes before the men could get it going.

When Fire Superintendent W.J. Gilberd and Station Officer J. Driberg arrived at the Friendly Society dispensary they could get only a trickle of water and, driven back by fumes, were unable to save the building. Then reports came in that W.R. Henderson's Hastings St pharmacy had ignited. Gilberd left two firefighters working on the Friendly Society fire and took the No 2 Dennis to Hastings St.

The blaze there had actually started in the rear of Henderson's shop midway between Browning and Herschel Sts, adjacent to the county council offices. Here there was a "good working supply and pressure of water" and the brigade was getting Henderson's fire well in hand when Arthur Hobson's shop in the Masonic Hotel also erupted into flame, joining a fire that had apparently started in the ruined kitchen of the hotel.

With the hotel already ablaze, there was every chance the whole block might go up. Just then the water pressure died, forcing the firefighters to use the pumps on the engine.

With a prevailing wind blowing the fire out to sea, there was hope the fire could be contained in the Hastings St-Marine Parade blocks. However, a shift of wind sent the flames roaring up Hastings St towards the hill. The water ran out altogether, and in the face of the advancing inferno the brigade had to "abandon their position, losing a quantity of hose and gear" but saving both engines from immolation.

Rescuers hastened to save trapped victims from the fire. Edith Mary Barry, 61, was one of nine at the morning communion service led by Archdeacon Brocklehurst in the Anglican Cathedral when the earthquake struck and the building collapsed.

Her son knew she was somewhere under the rubble and found her almost completely entombed, her legs and body pinned by a heavy girder. Willing rescuers tried to prise her free, but "all efforts to lift the girder were unavailing".

Flames from the Hastings St fire spread to the ruined cathedral and "gradually drew nearer and nearer to the stricken woman". Firemen played hoses on the wreckage until the water ran out. The situation was desperate. Dr G. E. Waterworth was on the scene, but all he could do to save the agonised woman from being burned alive was inject her with what reporters called "a large dose" of morphine. "Death was inevitable", the New Zealand Herald reported two days later, "but at least it was without pain".

... Fire continued to rage in central Napier through the afternoon. In the face of flames driven by a brisk breeze, and frustrated by lack of water, the firemen fell back time and again - but they never gave up. Loss of the water supply was a major problem. It was not wholly due to cracked pipes: the real difficulty was that power failure prevented the borough pumps from refilling the Cameron Rd reservoir ... Napier seemed doomed to burn.

The brigade had been unable to halt the fire as it advanced up Hastings St towards the vulnerable housing district on the hill, though they worked on until the last moment and were lucky to save the engines as fire rolled over their position ... Even with the help of sailors from the Veronica there seemed little chance of halting the fire until a change of wind around noon blew the flames the other way.

Still searching for water, Gilberd took one of the engines to the fire main next to the Soldiers Memorial on Marine Parade. The brigade managed to get enough pressure here to temporarily stop the fire spreading down Hastings St, but the supply ran out before the blaze could be completely extinguished.

Hampered by shingle blocking the pumps, Gilberd soon abandoned efforts to use sea water and sent the No 2 Dennis to Clive Square, where firemen dropped lines down a half-forgotten salt-water sump dug decades earlier and began battling the fires ripping down Emerson St.

Meanwhile, Gilberd took the No 1 Dennis to Dalton St, where he drew on storage tanks in the main pumping station and began fighting flames in the Caledonian Hotel ... The Dalton St water - and a timely demolition charge that flattened Henry Williams' shop - was just enough to halt the fire before it could leap into the wooden housing district south of the town centre.

The firemen and the many public volunteers who joined the fire-fighting effort could not relax even when a southerly change of wind at dusk seemed to reduce the risk of the blaze spreading.

Napier's business district from Tennyson to Dickens Sts had to be abandoned to the flames ... virtually the whole of central Napier was annihilated - more than 11 blocks were either totally or partially burned out.

People from Wairoa to Waipukurau settled down to spend the night outside. Some had tents, others made do with blankets and rugs. ... Fortunately it was fine and warm - "Never did a softer night smile upon human catastrophe," a reporter said later - but few people actually slept.

Many camped on Marine Parade, where journalists rushing up from Wellington found them "sleeping out on the seashore amid stacks of hastily salvaged goods ... Here they were, seeking slumber on the sands between a line of burning buildings and the line of surf".

K. C. Sinclair, on Napier Terrace near the ruins of the hospital, was worried by aftershocks. "Most of the neighbours had gathered on our lawn and had brought bedding with them, and we were busy making beds ... It was, in spite of our terrible plight, really amazing to see the way people behaved. One man had a cap on, another wore a hat, as did several women, to sleep in. I myself had in the morning just put on a dress to attend a wedding and have worn it since, as I have lost everything else. No one, of course, undressed ... In the middle of the night we heard an exclamation from one woman. She had trod on something prickly - it was a hedgehog. Everybody laughed - and then came another terrific shock, which set our nerves all on edge again."

The aftershock was a major earthquake in its own right, damaging buildings already weakened by the primary shock.

At dawn on February 4 the cruisers of the New Zealand Naval Division, HMS Dunedin and HMS Diomede arrived off the Napier roadstead. Wary after reports of shoaling, they slowed well out to sea and cautiously worked their way in. By 8.30am, they were at anchor about two miles from the harbour entrance.

Their arrival in such short order was the result of a turn of fortune. On the morning of February 3 they had been about to leave Devonport for manoeuvres with the Royal Australian Navy. They were fully manned, supplied and fuelled, and had steam up when [Commander Morgan of the Veronica's] SOS came in.

Commodore Geoffrey Blake contacted Dr C. E. Maguire, superintendent of Auckland Hospital, asking for doctors, nurses and medical supplies. The response was a "genuine triumph of organisation" ... [Surgical and medical stores, an x-ray plant, stretchers, tents, blankets, beds, shovels and picks] were collected on the dockside by 2pm and loaded within half an hour.

Each cruiser brought 450 officers and men to the disaster zone.

The Napier fires were still spreading when the Navy arrived - Ahuriri continued to blaze, and in town the Power Board store off Dickens St caught alight at 6am.

The Navy made an enormous contribution over the next few days ... Police, fire and medical services played an important part, as did many individuals who survived the quake.

However, the influx of hundreds of fresh, disciplined men who were not facing the loss of all they knew made a real difference.

"The first two days were the worst," [Captain Hardy Spicer of HMS Dunedin] later recalled, "for the men had no sleep whatever".

Captain J.C. Westall of the Diomede later explained to reporters that they "acted as firemen, took part in demolition work, cooked meals for refugees, were food distributors, water carriers, tractor drivers, policemen, searched for the dead and carried bodies to the morgues, carried out sanitation work, and even acted as nurses".

A huge camp in Napier's Nelson Park provided emergency accommodation and an evacuation centre.

Water squeezed from the aquifer by the quake was drained, tents were erected, latrines were dug, and rudimentary mess blocks were built to cope with up to 2500 people.

At least 2000 people spent the night of February 4 in the park, and others arrived the next day. Although many were frightened, hungry and stressed, discipline never broke down. Agnes Bennett thought the camp was a great morale-booster. "... The dull, expressionless faces were disappearing and life and interest had begun to return."

Entertainment was as critical as food and water. Relief workers brought a marquee back from Wellington on February 9 ... A "most efficient" orchestra and residents provided a "galaxy of talent" for nightly shows. Few stayed long in the camp, which was mainly an evacuation centre. The decision to evacuate women and children from Napier was one of the first taken by the Napier Earthquake Executive Committee.

By the end of the first day 1000 women and children had been moved. Some 4783 had gone by February 7.

... Some found the exodus reminiscent of war-torn France. "The traffic on the road to Palmerston North was tremendous," one reporter wrote. "Cars, lorries, everything on wheels seemed to be there. They were full of furniture, bedding, mattresses, babies' prams, and all sorts of household utensils. It was a flight."

The 70,000 odd residents of Hawkes Bay owned just over 10,500 vehicles in 1931, but literally tens of thousands of other vehicles drove in during the two days after the disaster to bring aid or evacuate refugees. Some 27,000 cars passed through Waipukurau in 13 hours on February 5 alone.

A few [refugees] made their way south independently in their own cars, including a Napier family who "all packed themselves into the car in which the kiddies had slept and drove to Dannevirke, where they asked the first man they met if he could tell them where they could get a tent to camp in the domain.

"That man insisted on taking them to his home, and kept them there for days under the assurance that if they left he would find more refugees to fill the house".

Just under a quarter of the refugees went by train. [The railway was restored within two days, despite bending and twisting and damage to bridges.]

[Havelock North] resident S.M.M. von Dadelszen later recalled that "one of my warmest memories of the earthquake time is of the kindness and helpfulness of everyone".

One contemporary account wrote glowingly of the way "neighbour helped neighbour" and "for the time being at least, there is a greater human understanding of each other than ever there was before. May it continue!"