THE EARTHQUAKE.
DAMAGE IN GREYMOUTH.
NOISE HEARD IN WELLINGTON.
THIRTEEN LIVES LOST. (abridged)
The toll of the earthquake in the South Island is mounting up, and now reaches 13 lives. William Chamley, a widower, aged 55 years, was killed in the Cardiff Bridge Mine, Seddonville, and Robert McAllister, another miner, lost his life in the Glasgow Mine, Seddonville. There were ten deaths in the Matakitaki Valley, about three miles from Murchison. In one case a landslide engulfed a house and Mrs S. Busch and her daughter, aged 28, and son, Ron., aged 18, were killed. Mrs Busch’s husband witnessed the terrible fate of his family from an adjoining paddock. -Thames Star, 19/6/1929.
LANDSLIDE ENGULFS VICTIMS
HORRIFYING SIGHT
Further details of the land-slip that killed three members of the Busch family and Mr C. Morel are now available. The information was supplied by the driver of the car which brought Mr Busch into Nelson yesterday afternoon. Mr Busch said that he had just set out to cut fern on the hill. A tremendous roar attracted his attention and he looked up to become a horrified spectator of the fall of a gigantic slice of the hillside upon his home in which were his wife and two children — a daughter aged 28 and a son aged 18. The slip, which Mr Busch estimates to be at least 300 acres in area, buried his house 80 to 100 feet deep in rocks and spoil.
WHOLE LANDSCAPE ALTERED A Nelson man who was in Murchison all through the earthquake and Monday night said that the whole landscape was altered there. He referred to the blockage of the Matakitaki river and said the danger of a flood was one of the main reasons why the people finally decided to come away to Nelson. A few men have remained in the stricken town and will not leave unless absolutely forced to do so.
On Monday night tents were erected in the school grounds and arrangements made to feed the townspeople who had all gathered there. According to the Nelson man everyone in Murchison behaved splendidly throughout the ordeal. Yesterday morning the local storekeepers threw open their shops to the public and much-needed food was obtained from them.
It is understood that great assistance was rendered by Mr J. H. Parker (Nelson) and Mr McKay (Wellington) and others who assisted the local residents to organise the camp at the school grounds on Monday night and made arrangements for food. -Nelson Evening Mail, 19/6/1926.
THE EARTHQUAKE
MORE REFUGEES FROM MURCHISON
FURTHER LOSS OF LIFE FEARED
TWO MEN IN BUSH CAMP
By Telegraph — Press Association WELLINGTON, this day. Further Murchison refugees arrived in Nelson last night by the special train, bringing the total number evacuated to 289. More are expected to-day.
The Hon. H. Atmore, Minister of Education, addressing the refugees, stated that the Government would not be found wanting in recognition of its duty to the people of Murchison and other districts which suffered from the earthquake.
It is reported from Lake Rotoroa that fears are entertained for the safety of two men who are camped in the bush at the head of the lake. At Murchison yesterday the shakes were of frequent occurrence and one about 3 p.m. was of sufficient violence to throw a man off his feet. No further damage to buildings was reported there last night and the general aspect of the town was the same as the previous day.
Mr Samuel Busch, who lost his wife, son, aged 18, and eldest daughter, aged 28, under most distressing circumstances during the earthquake at Murchison on Monday, is a brother of Mr W. E. Busch, of Waihi. The first direct communication received by Mr Busch concerning the calamitous occurrence came to hand last evening, the office from which the message originated being Mapua, near Nelson. It read: — “Mother, Ronnie and Emily perished in the earthquake.” (signed) Phyllis Busch. Mr S. Busch’s family numbered four, three daughters and one son. The two surviving daughters reside with their grandmother in Mapua, near Nelson. A second message announcing the tragedy was received last evening by Mr Busch from his brother-in-law, Mr A. Lockyer, at Nelson. The message added that the shakes were continuing and the conditions were bad. Mr S. Busch had been engaged in dairying in the Murchison Valley for the past seven or eight years, and prior to removing to Murchison had resided at Hope, in the same district.
The postmaster at Murchison wired to Mr Busch this morning: “Regret to confirm the catastrophe. Mrs Busch and her son and daughter were buried under thousands of tons of debris."
Murchison is 63 miles south-east of Westport and the valley and neighbourhood was the scene in the early days of considerable mining (sluicing) activity. -Waihi Daily Telegraph, 20/6/1929.
A DREADFUL EXPERIENCE
MR BUSCH’S TERRIBLE LOSS
Mr S. Busch who was the horrified spectator of the eruption which buried his home and family and blocked the Matakitaki river informs us that he had just left home and was driving to Murchison at the time. His previous intention was to plough on the land submerged but he changed his mind. The first impression was that of a strong wind blowing. Then the shake came and in looking back towards home he saw volumes of dust, earth and rock rising up. The earthquake had left him at this time. He quickly unharnessed the horses and let them go. On turning round again he found the debris had reached Morel’s house and demolished it. The largest explosion came from the back of his house which he found buried. Knowing his wife and family were there he made his way to where his house should have been while the debris was still moving. Noticing could be done. Everything had gone. Mr Busch then made his way to Morel's which was showing on the edge of the debris. It took fully an hour to get across. Friends then took Mr Busch from the terrible scene. Everything had gone. -Nelson Evening Mail, 20/6/1929.
VALLEY LAID WASTE.
DEVASTATION AROUND MURCHISON.
MOUNTAINS SHATTERED. (abridged)
(SPECIAL TO THE PRESS.) NELSON, June 19.
Yesterday's earthquake at Murchison was undoubtedly the most terrific occurrence of the kind within record of human experience in New Zealand. Even a brief visit to the stricken district is sufficient to reveal this.
From the Owen Junction, fifteen miles on the Nelson side of Murchison, into the township the whole countryside is shattered and riven. Slips are everywhere to be seen on the hillsides. The edges of the river terraces have fallen away, the road itself is cracked and fissured, and innumerable slips have fallen across it in the neighbourhood of Grassy.
The range to the north of the road is practically shattered, great faces of rock being exposed over a distance of a mile or more where before the cataclysm was dense bush. The peaks around the Owen Hotel are split in all directions, scars covering the greater part of their summits and sides. The new concrete bridge across Doctor's Creek is down, the solid slab that formed the traffic way standing on end. The bridge across the Buller river before Murchison is reached stands intact, but parts of the roadway bordering the river as one approaches Murchison have fallen clean away and traffic has to take to the neighbouring paddocks.
Nearing the town, signs of damage are seen in practically every building. Dwelling-houses are leaning awry, tipped to one side and turned on their foundations in numbers of cases. Chimneys naturally are down almost everywhere, but whereas elsewhere chimneys have simply fallen on to the adjacent roof or ground, at Murchison Post Office the top of the chimney was hurled clean across the roof and fell on the ground on the other side of the building.
The most striking wreck in the town is Messrs Hodgson's store, a concrete structure, which is leaning sideways at an angle of approximately 45 degrees, the ground storey being at one angle and the upstairs at another. A reliable witness, Mr F. B. Spiers, states that in his opinion Hodgson's store hit the ground twice and was finally left in the position described. This sounds incredible, but when one hears of other experiences, anything seems credible.
Mr Pointon, of Maruia, for instance, was visiting his wife in hospital at the time of the shake. He states that he was getting on a chair when it began. He does not know what became of the chair, but he found himself on the floor and hanging on to the legs of the bedstead. He was violently thrown from side to side of the room as the building heaved first in one direction and then in the other.
The school children had a miraculous escape, a chimney descending into the window as the last child left the building. Easels were thrown on top of decks, a mantelpiece dislodged from the wall, the contents of the cupboards shot holus bolus across the floor, and the heavy cupboards tipped forward from the walls.
The interior of the Post Office is in similar chaos, and the contents of private houses much as one might expect to find them if the whole building had been tossed bodily into the air. At Murchison the upheaval is described, not as an earthquake, but as an eruption, and the appearance trom the surrounding hills certainly gives the impression that they have been burst asunder by an upheaval from below, rather than that slips have been shaken off their sides.
The Matakitaki river, which joins the Buller at Murchison, is completely blocked by an enormous mass of debris about a mile long by three-quarters or a mile in width, and the river is banking up in a lake behind it. Although the Maruia is similarly blocked in three places a few miles up from its Junction from the Buller, and the Buller itself has a slip across it near Sullivan's bridge, eight miles below Murchison, it was only possible for your correspondent in the available time to visit the Matakitaki slip.
The scene here is almost indescribable. Running up the Matakitaki road, one sees on the far side of the valley the whole face of the range gone and then approaching to the edge of the terrace opposite this the whole floor of the valley for nearly a square mile is one great tract of shattered rock, mud, and debris of all sorts. It was here that four of the persons lost in the disaster perished. At one point the upper storey of the late Mr O. Morel's residence is seen above the tumbled debris, a quarter of a mile distant from its original position. A lump of rock is pointed out on the far side of the valley as roughly indicating the spot at which the farmhouse of Mr Busch stood, and far below which it now lies with the bodies of Mrs Busch, Miss Busch. and Mr Busch jun.
It is stated that the mountain side here was literally projected or erupted outwards across the valley, forcing the water and mud out of the river bed to the foot of the high level terrace half a mile away. Standing on this upper terrace it was difficult to realise that the wilderness before one had, on Monday morning, been an expanse of fertile river meadows. -Press, 20/6/1929.
MURCHISON TO-DAY.
STRANGE COMMUNITY.
RULED BY "DICTATOR."
ONLY FIVE WOMEN LEFT.
SHAKES STILL OCCURRING (abridged)
(By to "Star.")
MURCHISON, Saturday,
A community unique in the Dominion is to be found at Murchison to-day. Here are about 50 men and five women, living a communal life, with an earthquake every hour or so, and deep rumblings and roarings going in the hills night and day. They are busy endeavouring to get the stricken township back to normal, and to make residents and visitors alike feel that, despite the evil times which have befallen them there is hope for the future. Murchison is the one town in the Dominion to-day in which money is of no value. There is nothing that can be bought; but no one is allowed to go without the necessities of life. An emergency committee rules the town, and its unwritten laws are as effective as the most stringent code. The only rules are those concerning the food supply; and they are most strictly observed.
All living in the Open. Everyone lives in the open, or in sheds and verandahs. Some are living in a score of tents which have been erected, but these will not be fully occupied until to-morrow, when a group of 37 refugees will arrive here from the mid-Maruia. These people are camped in the bush to-night, women and children being housed in a rough bush hut, while the menfolk are spending the night in the open in pouring rain.
The head of the committee which controls the town is Mr. Alec. Thorn, in ordinary life a secondary school master, but now a most efficient dictator. All arrivals have to report to him, and he makes them welcome, seeing to their personal comfort as if he were manager of a leading hotel.
On a blackboard in the school grounds, where the relief camp stands and where open air cooking is carried on, are rules set out as follows: —
RULES FOR COOKHOUSE.
(1) Get a plate from the table and go to the counter.
(2) After service, pass through the marquee.
(3) After dining, please return dishes to the table for washing.
(4) Don't linger over meals.
For dinner you need: —
(1) A soup plate and spoon. Then come back and get
(2) A meat plate and knife and fork.
(3) Sweet plate.
Everyone eats meals standing up in a marquee, trestle tables being provided.
One of the heroes of the camp is Mr. Dave. Mann, formerly cook at the Masonic Hotel. He is in sole charge of the cooking arrangements, and since the big 'quake he has prepared and served nearly 2000 meals in the open air.
He has an able and willing helper in "Johnny" Lawrence, a youth who sees that everyone gets a good meal and issues the food with scrupulous, fairness. No one is allowed to go short and no one is allowed to waste anything.
The five women who have refused to leave the township are Mrs. McWha, an old lady, Mrs. Bathe, and the Mesdames Gibson (three). Mrs McWha acts as camp "mother," and she is help and adviser to all.
Murchison is a strange place indeed. It was here that only a few days ago the earthquake robbed a small community of ten lives and yet not a sad face is met with in the district. It is no disrespect to the dead that the men smile, for if they were to allow their minds to dwell on Black Monday they would never be able to stay in the place. The community numbers about fifty, of whom five are women. The others, including practically all the women and children and over one hundred men of the district, are in Nelson.
Devastation Described. Shakes are still occurring — shakes that would be considered very serious in Auckland. The most unnerving rumbling is going on in the hills which surround what was once a happy and placid village, the centre of pleasing dairy farms. To-day many of those farms lie beneath huge lakes or are buried under thousands of tons of rock. The township itself is situated at the junction of the Buller and Maruia Roads and nestles in the midst of high mountains, most of which were bush-clad until last week. Now the majority of them stand gaunt and bare, their sides standing put against the grey sky as brilliant yellow, relieved here and there by portions of. bush which have escaped the terrific landslides and what are termed here "explosions," the name which, for lack of a better, is generally used to describe the huge outburst which occurred.
Three miles east of the township is the dam over the Matakitaki River, just in front of where Mr. Busch's illfated homestead stood, the latter being across the river. From the late Mr. Morel's home a range of steep hills runs behind the township, and these divide Murchison from the Maruia River, which runs parallel to the Matakitaki. but three miles further south. It was in almost a direct line with the big outburst of rock in the Matakitaki River that a dam formed over the Maruia, killing six people. Both these rivers run into the Buller, and this was what gave rise to alarm in Westport, for had both these dams broken they would have caused the dam in the Buller to break, and a huge volume of water would have poured through the Buller Gorge and down over the river flat on which Westport stands. The scene at the dam at Matakitaki is almost indescribable. Here lay Morel's farm, with 90 acres of first-class river flat land. Immediately across the placid stream lay another fine block of cattlefattening land, which was farmed by Mr. Biisch. To-day these farms lie under an average of fifteen feet of rock. Half a mile above them the rock has formed a dam 40 feet wide across the river.
Where Family Lies Buried. But interest naturally centres on places where lives were lost. Nothing at all can be seen of Busch's place. All that indicates where the homestead and three members of the Busch family lie are three huge rocks, much larger than the others, nearly forming a triangle, which serves as a gravestone for the dead family. On the north side of the river the top storey of Mr. Morel's house stands, battered and torn clean off the bottom storey, a chain away from where the house stood. Of the bottom storey not a vestige remains. It is crushed almost beyond recognition and half buried in rocks and mud. One of Mr. Morel's motor cars stands vertically against the wall of the upper portion of the house of his other motor car the only part that can be seen from the bank is a wheel, from beside which his body was extricated.
Mrs. Busch, who is still in a weak condition, had a most terrible, agonising experience. With her husband she attempted to run clear of the devestating slide, which rushed toward them at the speed of an express train. Neither could get clear, and they were rolled over and over among rocks and mud. Then the movement stopped. She found herself being suffdcated under a mass of mud, but she managed to get an arm free, and then her head. Her screams brought assistance, and she was extricated, more dead than alive. When her husband was found he was beyond human aid. -Auckland Star, 24/6/1929.
The above account of the survival of Mrs Busch and the death of her husband is included but it seems very likely to be the story of Mrs Morel, as shown in the last story of this sequence.
THANKS
Mr W. E. Busch, Mrs Busch, and family, desire to thank most sincerely the many friends who sent messages of sympathy in the bereavement to them and more particularly to Mr Busch’s brother, Mr Samuel Busch, and surviving members of his family by the death of Mrs S. Busch, and her son and daughter, under such distressing circumstances during the earthquake on the West Coast of the South Island, on Monday, June 17. -Waihi Daily Telegraph, 2/7/1929.
EARTHQUAKE VICTIM
REMAINS OF RONALD BUSCH FOUND
A portion of the body of Ronald Busch, 17 years of age, one of the victims of the Matakitaki landslide was found yesterday afternoon in the Matakitaki river about a mile from where the Busch homestead formerly stood. The father identified the remains by a boot. The Coroner, who is in Wellington at present, will be informed of what has taken place as soon as he returns. The funeral will be held at Murchison on Sunday. -Nelson Evening Mail, 26/7/1929.
EARTHQUAKE LOSSES
(To the Editor) Sir, —
Mr Smith mentioned at the meeting of the Earthquake Relief Committee, held on the 11th inst., that people in Murchison had completely lost their stock and farms. If Mr Smith was to traverse the whole of the earthquake area he would find that there was only one farm that had been completely ruined. All that was saved in my case were certain animals, etc. (9 cows, 2 horses and one spring cart) which happened to be away from the farm on that terrible morning of the 17th June, 1929. Without in any way wishing to bring myself into prominence, there is no doubt that I am the heaviest loser by this sudden catastrophe. I lost practically everything a man holds dear in this life, and after many years of earnest struggle.
— I am, SAMUEL BUSCH. Stanley Brook, 16th April. -Nelson Evening Mail, 16/4/1930.
EARTHQUAKE RECALLED
Death Of Hard-Hit Survivor
(From Our Own Reporter) NELSON, September 19. The death in Nelson of Mr Samuel Busch recalls the Murchison earthquake of June 17, 1929, for no-one who survived it was hit harder by that disaster than he. He had left his home on the west bank of the Matakitaki river that morning to take cream to the Murchison factory and when he returned some two hours later he found that his home had completely disappeared taking with it his wife, only son and a daughter. Two other daughters were away from home staying with friends. Where the house had stood on a terrace nothing remained but a broken and deeply scarred hillside; more than half the area of his farm had slipped toward and across the Matakitaki river, taking the dwelling and the three people with it. Mr Busch never returned to live in the Matakitaki.
The same landslide as carried away the Busch homestead swept several chains across the Matakitaki river and wrecked the lower storey of the late Mr Charles Morel’s two-storey house, leaving the upper storey almost intact and floating on top of the debris. Mr Morel was on the veranda at the time and hearing the earthquake rumble and the noise of the landslide called to his wife to come out of the house. Seeing what was approaching them they ran hand in hand towards the road, but the landslide overwhelmed them and both were submerged in the slurry. When the movement stopped Mrs Morel made a successful effort to reach the surface. Her husband was not very far away, but had had an artery in his leg severed by a sheet of corrugated iron which had been torn off one of the sheds and he died within minutes. Mrs Morel had a miraculous escape. -Press, 20/9/1957.
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