Hawkes Bay is located on a zone of seismic activity running down the North Island of New Zealand.
The pacific plate is being subducted 23KM beneath Napier to a depth of 80KM under Mt. Ruapehu.
The indo-australian plate forms the ranges of the Hawkes Bay.
The plates collide at 55mm a year.



On the morning of 3 Feburary 1931 10.47am aprox. there was an earthquake that measured 7.0 on the richter scale.
The epicentre was 30km NW of napier and 16km below the surface.
Seismic waves were travelling at 6km per second.
30 seconds later another earthquake hit measuring 7.8.

The cliff face of bluff hill collapsed from the first shake.
A section of land 20km by 5km raised and the Aruriri lagoon completely drained leaving a new large area of land.
Buildings swayed and plenty of them collapsed. All together 10 acres of buildings had collapsed.
Over 200 businesses were destroyed.
When the buildings collapsed after the second shake, they killed most of the people who had ran out from them and there homes after the first shock.
The earthquake had made cracks in the road and some cars had fallen into the cracks.
Both the roads out of Napier had been blocked from uplifted land and landslides, there was no access to or from Napier.
The buildings that had not been destroyed by the earthquake, were soon destroyed when a fire broke out from a chemist store on Hastings street.




The NZ Royal Navy HMS Veronica was in the port and alerted the rest of the country by radio while the rest of the crew were helping rescue trapped victims.



$300,00000000000 $30,000000.00 (million) worth of damage was caused btriay the earthquake.
The government gave $3,000000000000 (million) in loans to people to help re-build their homes with low interest.
Architects for the next 5 years re-build the town into an Art Deco style.

256 people died. Earthquake relief fund was opened by the Prime Minister and eventually reached $800,000.00