The night the east coast sea went crazy

Whitianga harbourmaster Don Ross has experienced a lot of things in his time but nothing as frightening as the tsunami which forced the evacuation of several east coast towns in 1960.

It was about 7pm on May 25 when he first learned of the unusual waves rushing into shore and then receding again at great speed.

"Dick Cole, who was a fisherman, came knocking on my door and said, 'You'd better come down and have a look at the river, the boats are going up and down'."
Mr Ross recalls how the water rushed up over the streets and tore boats from their moorings. The next minute it would be sucked back out to sea - so far that a 120-year-old shipwreck was uncovered and left lying on the sand.

Every 20 minutes the cycle repeated, with the water rising and falling 16 feet (4.9m) in under an hour.

"I had never experienced anything like it before," said Mr Ross. "The thing that got to me was that I didn't know what it was going to do. I had been in all sorts of situations before but that was so unusual we couldn't believe what was happening."

At the same time similar scenes were being played out along the entire eastern coast of New Zealand which was being lashed by tidal waves generated by an earthquake in Chile, several hours earlier.

In Auckland the tide dropped 3ft (91.4cm) while water bubbled in whirlpools at Great Mercury Island and a 3338-tonne freighter ran aground during tidal surges at Lyttelton.

While the damage and devastation was in no way comparable to the Asian tsunami, it has brought back memories of a terrifying night nearly 45 years ago.