{"story":["At 10.47 a.m. on Tuesday 3 February 1931 the ground in Hawke's Bay heaved sharply upward and swayed. After a half-minute pause came violent shaking and rocking, and in all the earthquake lasted two and a half minutes. It measured magnitude 7.8. In Napier the Anglican cathedral, the public library and the recently built Nurses' Home were destroyed, and clerical staff and off-duty nurses died in the Nurses' Home. In Hastings 17 people died when Roach's department store collapsed, and eight when the front of the five-storey Grand Hotel fell into Heretaunga Street. Fifteen died at the Park Island Old Men's Home near Taradale, where a 91-year-old man was pulled alive from the rubble three days later. It was the first day of school after the summer holidays. Nine students died in the brick Napier Technical College, several of them after going back in to rescue trapped classmates, and seven died at the Marist Fathers' Seminary in Greenmeadows.","Within minutes, fire broke out in three chemist shops in Napier's business district. Water pressure faded to a trickle as the reservoir emptied, and attempts to pump sea water from the beach failed when the hoses blocked with shingle. By mid-afternoon the business area was ablaze, and the flames killed people who were still trapped. Some 36 hours later, after firemen, volunteers and sailors had worked through the night, the fires were out. By then almost 11 blocks of central Napier had been gutted. Hastings also had fires, but water was available there soon after the earthquake and the fire damage was less extensive. The 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand records that a second violent shock struck at dusk, and that men trapped in a Hastings hotel died in that second wave of tremors while rescuers worked to free them.","The navy sloop HMS Veronica had berthed in Napier's harbour that morning. When the harbour bottom rose the ship was left aground, and its crew radioed Auckland. Within hours the cruisers HMS Dunedin and Diomede were on their way, each carrying 450 men and officers, with doctors and nurses from Auckland Hospital and medical equipment, and they arrived the following dawn. Meanwhile Veronica's sailors went into the town to help reach people trapped in wrecked buildings. Aftershocks made the work dangerous, and some rescuers were killed when more buildings collapsed. Napier's hospitals were too badly damaged to use, so a surgical station was set up on the lawns of the Botanical Gardens, and at the Napier Park racecourse doctors operated beneath the grandstand. Within a day the army had set up a tent camp for 2,500 people. Women and children were encouraged to leave for refugee camps in other North Island towns, while able-bodied men were required to stay for search, demolition and clean-up work.","The official death toll is 256: 161 in Napier, 93 in Hastings and two in Wairoa. There are 258 names on the earthquake memorial in Napier, and Te Ara notes that in 2019 researchers identified 17 new victims and found that 17 people previously counted were not victims. In terms of loss of life, NZHistory describes it as the worst civil disaster to have occurred in New Zealand. The earthquake was caused by movement on a fault deep beneath the region. An area about 90 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide domed upward, raising land and sea floor by as much as 2.7 metres, and sea water drained from Ahuriri Lagoon. Te Ara puts the new land at more than 2,000 hectares; the 1966 Encyclopaedia gives 9,000 acres (about 3,600 hectares). The former lagoon became productive land and the site of Hawke's Bay airport. The raised seabed also meant that larger ships could no longer use Ahuriri.","On 11 March 1931 the government appointed a magistrate, J. S. Barton, and an engineer, L. B. Campbell, as commissioners for Napier. Few insurance policies covered earthquakes, and the loans offered under the Hawke's Bay Earthquake Act 1931 were far from adequate in the depths of the depression, so much of the money for recovery came from charity. Shops traded from a temporary centre at Clive Square, known as Tin Town, while a new town centre went up with wider streets and some of New Zealand's earliest underground power and telephone lines. Four rival architectural practices joined to share resources and ideas, and the most popular style was art deco, with spare, clean lines and geometric motifs. Hastings celebrated its reconstruction in November 1932, and in January 1933, during the New Napier Carnival, Napier was declared 'reborn'. Engineers studied the damaged buildings, and a Buildings Regulations Committee drew up guidelines that Te Ara describes as the forerunner of New Zealand's building codes. Many of the 1930s buildings have since been restored, Napier has built its branding around art deco, and an Art Deco Festival is held each February."],"sources":[{"title":"Deadly Hawke’s Bay earthquake","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/hawkes-bay-earthquake","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Hawke’s Bay’s big shake - roadside stories","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/video/hawkes-bays-big-shake-roadside-stories","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Historic earthquakes – The 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/historic-earthquakes/page-6","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Historic earthquakes – Rebuilding Napier","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/historic-earthquakes/page-8","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"The Hawke’s Bay Earthquake, 1931 (1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/disasters-and-mishaps-earthquakes/page-2","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Hawke’s Bay region – Transport and infrastructure","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/hawkes-bay-region/page-10","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Hawke’s Bay region – Arts, culture and built heritage","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/hawkes-bay-region/page-11","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"}]}