Tangiwai Disaster.
On December 24 1953 at approximately 10:21pm a Wellington to Auckland express passenger train crashed when the flooded Whangaehu River Bridge collapsed under the train, killing 151 people and seriously injured 134 people.But how did this happen
Mt Ruapehu erupted in 1945, but by the end of the year the excitement was over. The crater, about 300 metres deep, slowly refilled with water. The mountain did not seem dangerous, and it was no longer being monitored. By 1953, however, Crater Lake was 8 metres higher than its level before 1945.
In 1953, the debris at the outlet of Crater Lake collapsed. Few realised that the water was now held in by an unstable mass of ice and volcanic rubble and ash.
About 340,000 cubic metres of water poured into the head of the Whangaehu River and swept down the valley, picking up sand, silt and boulders as it went. This volcanic mud flow, known as a lahar, smashed into the main trunk railway bridge at Tangiwai. The concrete piers were knocked out and the bridge partially collapsed. The force of the flood destroyed four of these carriages and those inside had little chance of survival.
Questions were tangled inside the passengers and the families heads wanted to know how this happened. The weather on this day was fine and no one expected floods at Whangaehu River.
What reshaped the situation was the sudden release of approximately 2 million cubic metres of water from the crater lake nearby Mt Ruapehu. A 6-metre-high wave containing water, ice, mud and rocks surged, like a tsunami, down the Whangaehu River destroyed the bridge that collapsed under the weight of the train.
The time it took to recover the bodies was very long. Stripped bodies were recovered as far away as the river mouth, 130 km downstream. On Christmas Day, Prime Minister Sidney Holland asked ‘Farmers and others with property on the banks of this river as far as the sea … to keep a close watch for bodies and to send reports to the nearest police station.’
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