Reading the ruins: three sources on the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake
At 10.47 a.m. on 3 February 1931 an earthquake destroyed most of central Napier and much of Hastings; 256 people died. You have three sources. Source A is a telegram sent by the mayor of Napier to the Prime Minister on the day of the earthquake: 'Town practically wrecked. Doctors, tents, food urgently needed. Water and power gone. Fires spreading.' Source B is a letter written in 1975 by a woman who was fourteen in 1931, recalling that 'the ground came in waves like the sea' and that 'we were told to keep out of the shops for fear of looters'. Source C is an official history published by the city council in 1981 to mark fifty years since the rebuilding, which states that 'the disaster was met with calm and discipline, and the town was rebuilt in Art Deco style within a decade'. You are preparing a report on how people responded in the first week.
1. Assess the reliability of each source for a historian studying the immediate response to the earthquake.
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Source A: high reliability for the emergency itself
Provenance favours it. It was written on the day by the mayor, who had official responsibility and direct access to the damage, and sent to the Prime Minister, so the audience expected action rather than praise. Its content is specific and practical: doctors, tents, food, water, power, fire. Its limits are that it is a request for help, so it may emphasise urgency; it covers Napier only; and a telegram is short, so it is not a full account of the response.
Source B: good for experience, weak for detail
A first-hand account by someone who was there, so it has real value for what the shaking felt like and for the rumour of looting, which tells us about fear and social order. But it was written 44 years later: memory reshapes detail, and a fourteen-year-old's view was local. 'We were told' does not identify who gave the instruction.
Source C: weak for the first week
It was published for a civic anniversary with the purpose of celebrating recovery and the city's new identity. 'Calm and discipline' is a judgement with a purpose, not a record. Its claim about rebuilding within a decade may be broadly right but is rounded for celebration.
Judgement: A is best for the emergency, B for experience, C for civic memory. Used alone, each misleads.
2. Explain why Source C presents the response differently from Source B.
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Different purposes
Source C is a commemorative history published by the council fifty years on. Its job is to tell a story a city can be proud of: disaster met with order, then recovery and a distinctive rebuilt town. 'Calm and discipline' is exactly the sentence such a purpose produces, because it credits the community and its institutions.
Source B has no such job. A private letter written by an elderly woman about being fourteen is concerned with personal memory - the physical sensation of the quake and the rumour of looting. Fear and confusion are natural content.
Different positions
B was a child, with a child's limited view and a child's exposure to adult instructions. C is an institution writing about itself, with an interest in the reputation of the council that managed the rebuild.
Different distance in time
C's fifty-year distance lets it impose a narrative shape on events. B's distance produces forgetting and reshaping of a different kind. Neither is simply false: a community can show both discipline and fear in the same week.
Judgement: the difference is best explained by purpose and position, not by one source lying. A historian should read 'calm and discipline' as evidence of how the rebuild was remembered, and B as evidence of how it was lived.
3. What one additional source would you seek to test the claim that the response was 'calm and disciplined', and why would it help?
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The source I would seek
Hospital and relief committee records for February 1931 - admissions, the work of the Napier and Hastings relief committees, and police and army logs - kept in archives rather than written for publication.
Why it would help
- It is contemporaneous. It was created while events were unfolding, not fifty years later, so it is not shaped by the need to celebrate a rebuild.
- It records behaviour, not adjectives. Numbers of injured, requests for guards, reports of looting or of desertions from rescue work are observable facts that can confirm or contradict the word 'calm'.
- It has a purpose I can account for. Officials record what they must act on, so I can ask what a rise in guard requests might mean rather than assuming.
- It can be checked against other sources. I can compare it with Source A's telegram and with the letter in Source B.
What would count as a test
If relief records show orderly queues, functioning committees and no recorded looting, 'calm and discipline' gains support. If they show panic, guard requests and fights over supplies, the claim looks like commemoration rather than description.
Judgement: the best test of a commemorative claim is an administrative record created before anyone knew how the story would be told.