Newspaper Article 1931 – Napier Tested

THREE years later the Napier earthquake tested the capacity of the paper to deal with a national disaster on a major scale. A team of reporters and photographers, rushed to the scene by half-a-dozen routes, got the news and the pictures, only to find that telegraph, telephone, road, rail and air communications were cut. An awkward situation was saved by the Navy offering the use of warships’ radio transmitters and by the unexpected appearance on the scene of the editor, Mr R. M. Hacket, who, holidaying in Rotorua, had sped to the rescue in a hired aeroplane. Pictures and copy were rushed to a landing field at Hastings, flown back to Rotorua and from there brought to Auckland by car, driven by the editor’s daughter. At eight o’clock that night a dishevelled, breathless young lady dropped into the room of the night editor and deposited on his desk enough stories and pictures to fill two pages of the paper.