Earthquake!

We didn’t realise what really it was like till we got there. Oh gosh, we thought it was the end of the world.

– Hana Lyola Cotter recalls the scene, after arriving in Napier the day after the quake

I was sitting on the stove when this happened, and then all this shaking started. "Oh, whats happening?" We didn’t know what an earthquake was! That was new to us.

– Hana Lyola Cotter remembers the moment the quake started

While he was waiting for the tram, he heard jokers firing shots. So, he thought he would go and investigate the thing. There, he saw all these Pākehā shooting. He looked down, there was a shark, all in black. But, he knew that was the taniwha. He thought to himself 'there's something wrong...' That was half past eight in the morning. Eleven o'clock that day was the earthquake.

– Hone Hohepa recounts a story of a man on the day of the earthquake

It was the vibration that made me think it wasn't an earthquake. It was as if someone had got hold of the house and shook it as hard as you could possibly shake it. In fact, if you had said to me then "What do you think the intensity was?", I’d have said 10. It was that violent.

– Jim Clayton recounts the intensity of the shake

'Before the earthquake' and 'after the earthquake'... that's two terms that we used a lot. Sort of like BC and AD.

– Sally Sutherland, who was born after the earthquake, remembers the effects years after the earthquake

An earthquake is quick. It just comes, and then it's there, and it's huge.

– Lauris Edmond remembers the shock

We were always frightened. As soon as the light globes started to sway, we'd all hang on to one another and go white.

– Lauris Edmond remembers being at school during the aftershocks

The prisoners from Napier Jail were there, carrying out all the patients with blankets and laying them on the footpath. I knelt down and talked to some of them. Some were in great pain. All those prisoners obtained a free pardon because of their heroic work.

– Ivan Hodgkinson, who spent time helping patients at Doctor Moores Hospital, remembers the day of the earthquake

All my life I've always had that fear of there being another one.

– Ivan Hodgkinson discusses his anxiety, years later

It was like a war zone. There were broken legs, there were injured, there were people that had to have amputations. There was a man lying there with a piece of lamppost right through his thigh.

– Audrey Mckelvie remembers a horrific site at the camp for people who had lost their homes

[Earthquake] was a case of the TV3 commissioner at the time, Sue Woodfield, calling me round about the 23rd of December saying, ' Gaylene, I know you come from Napier and I know you've done an installation for the museum in Napier. The 75th anniversary is coming up for February the third. Could you make us a documentary in that time?' And I could.

– Director Gaylene Preston, quoted in Ngā Taonga's Finding Aid to The Dame Gaylene Preston Legacy Collection

When mother nature is angry, one of out of every four persons is injured, and more than 18,000 homeless will have lost everything they had in the world.

– Narrator for a newsreel made soon after the Napier quake