A Night of Terror: Wairarapa's 1942 Earthquake

(Paperback)

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"It was...a night of terror. Houses swayed, water pipes burst, crockery smashed and walls cracked. Many people rushed outside as chimneys crashed to the ground and it was miraculous no-one was harmed." With eye-witness accounts and newspaper reports, Jan McLaren has created, 60 years later, a vivid word picture of the June 24 1942 earthquake that literally changed Wairarapa overnight. A Night of Terror traces the history of Wairarapa and Wellington region earthquakes and the reasons for them. It recreates the dramatic events of June 24 and the aftermath in Masterton, the other towns in the valley and Wairarapas countryside. There are the frantic efforts to remove dangerous ornamentation and demolish damaged buildings as the aftershocks continued. There are the attempts to repair and rebuild at a time when the outcome of World War Two was still very much in the balance. A Night of Terror is illustrated with a unique collection of photographs, very few of them published before.