Imagine the city center of your town was a whiteboard – and a catastrophic industrial eraser wiped it clean .     This was the net effect of a 1931 earthquake in the east-coast town of Napier, reaching 7.8 on the Richter scale.      What the town decided to do afterward draws people there today.

The more kilometres we cover, the more kiwis we meet who refer to their homeland as “The Shaky Isles”.      Earthquakes are part of the furniture, not dwelt on or fussed over.     As one farmer said, “Earthquakes are as natural as a thunderstorm.”   Another fellow contends there is an earthquake somewhere in NZ every day, you may not even feel ‘em.      

If I understand it correctly, earthquakes can shift those mammoth geological plates up or down…and fortunately for Napier, their entire town was raised about the height of a door creating acres of new land, and metres of new waterfront.      Poor Christchurch in 2010 dropped in certain areas – the comparison is made more than once.   

A video of four survivors telling their recollections of the destruction made for compelling viewing .   Much like the Buried Village in Rotorua, nature groaned before she
burst.      One fellow was in his teens and working on a farm after school –the cows rebelled against going in the barn.     Odd, he thought.     The Scottish laddy he was working with announced that an earthquake is coming.    He had never heard the word before.     

Another foreshadowing event was the emptying of a large harbour, defined from the broader Bay by a thin skiff of land.     Like a Fundy tide, water disappeared leaving boats grounded and then it refilled again.         When the earthquake hit in force, that harbour was raised six feet, the water drained for good and new land appeared.    The quake killed 250, including all the nurses who were on night shift at the hospital.   After the quake, a pharmacist took his camera outside and took pictures of his destroyed city – one hour later flames broke out and his pics became the only record of that short time before the city was razed .      

As the survivors relived those days with glassy eyes, a few stories and perspectives stuck:

• We just watched as the brick school disintegrated into a cloud of red dust that went higher and higher.   We had no sense of what it all meant, just curiosity.     Our sense of terror and panic started when we saw our mother running frantically with a small lilac tree in her hands.  [Seven year old girl, now a poet]
• That night one young boy slept with his family
  under a large willow tree – but every time he put his head down he could heard
  groaning and rumbling continuing deep in the earth.   More than 600 aftershocks were recorded.   Not much sleep that night.  [Young boy] 
• I held my 5-year old sister’s hand in the schoolyard as we watched the school collapse.    I sat down intending to do nothing.    My little sister said, no, we must get home.      She was born knowing how to manage earthquakes.   [Seven year old girl]

Napier stands out not only as one of the biggest natural disasters in New Zealand in the last century, but also as a place that made a decision (and perhaps more impressively, stuck with it) to rebuild the town in a consistent style of the times – an Art Deco building blitz continued for two years until the town was restored to full functioning. Four architects with engaged, and a commitment was made to the styles of the day (largely deco, with some art nouveau and prairie style) and also to improving the city’s resilience.     All services were buried underground and all balconies were cantilevered.     A passionate Art Deco society today offers walking tours and gently biased comments on the odd building that bucked the trend.       

We loved the town, defined by a long and rugged beach waterfront that runs for likely 10 kms – inside of that are walkways, bike paths, a grassy skateboard park, a wee little paved roadway complete with tiny sets of lights for kids to practice on their bikes, an amphitheatre – basically built for community .     

As one of the survivors said, “In a funny way, Napier has an extra soul because so much has been put into her recovery.”