Qualla: 1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake

1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Henry Daroux, Public domain. At 10:47 on the morning of 3 February 1931, the ground beneath Hawke's Bay began to move. It did not stop for two and a half minutes. When the shaking ended, Napier and Hastings lay in ruins. Two hundred and fifty-six people were dead. Fires had broken out in chemist shops along Hastings Street. The seafloor itself had risen - 40 square kilometres of seabed thrust upward to become dry land, lifting the Ahuriri Lagoon more than 2.7 metres and creating ground that would eventually hold an airport, housing estates, and farmland. New Zealand had no emergency response framework, no earthquake building code, and no plan for what had just happened.

Image: James Henry Daroux | Public domain

1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake: Two and a Half Minutes

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The earthquake measured magnitude 7.8, centred 15 kilometres north of Napier along one of the thrust faults within the Hikurangi Subduction Zone's accretionary wedge, at depths between 5 and 25 kilometres. Nearly every building in the central areas of both Napier and Hastings col...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake: When the Sea Became Land

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M.Bitton, CC BY-SA 4.0. Perhaps the most extraordinary consequence was geological. The earthquake lifted roughly 40 square kilometres of seafloor above water level. The Ahuriri Lagoon, which had been a coastal body of water, rose by more than 2.7 metres and drained. Today, that reclaimed land holds Hawk...

Image: M.Bitton | CC BY-SA 4.0

1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake: Prisoners Who Stayed

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The earthquake produced moments of extraordinary human behaviour. At Bluff Hill in Napier, a group of prisoners on a work detail were caught in a landslip. Four were buried. The remaining prisoners dug them out - two were already dead - then reassembled without a single attempt t...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake: Art Deco from the Ashes

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit State Government Photographer, CC0. The government appointed two commissioners, John Barton and Lachlan Bain Campbell, to manage the rebuild after recognizing that the Napier borough council would be overwhelmed. A temporary shopping centre called Tin Town went up in Clive Square - corrugated iron structures housin...

Image: State Government Photographer | CC0