Just a few months short of her 100th birthday in May, Jean Williams isn't sure she really is the oldest living Hawke's Bay earthquake survivor.
But last year at the 1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake survivor's afternoon tea, she had the honour of cutting the cake as the oldest, together with two of the youngest survivors, Peter Dawe and Morris Nicholl, and will quite possibly be asked to do it again.
It's something the 99-year-old quake survivor looks forward to - and meeting some of her friends. She has only missed one occasion, since the first afternoon tea 10 years ago, when it was moved to Hastings and she wasn't able to get there.
She said it was hard to tell who would be there, as not everyone could attend.
Last year, on the 80th anniversary commemoration, 212 survivors turned up. This year more than 200 are expected.
Mrs Williams has plenty of memories of the 7.8-earthquake that struck at 10.47am on that fateful morning on February 3. At the time she was 18 and working as a shop assistant in Blythes, the fashionable three-storied drapery and furniture department store in Emerson St, which stood where the Farmer's building does now.
As the floor started to roll she tried to get out of the nearest door but, unable to open it, she and her colleagues scrambled their way through the millinery department.
She noticed the salesgirl starting to put the hats back on the stands and passing the haberdashery and all the cotton boxes coming out.
"We just wanted to get out," she said. Outside, the street was covered in rubble.
"Everything was down and the hospital bus was covered in rubbish."
Everyone eventually got out of the building, although they weren't so lucky at McGruer's department store next door when a brick wall fell out onto the street.
Making her way through a rubble-strewn Hastings St she headed toward her family and home in Sales St.
"When we got to Marine Parade a chap came along on a horse and told us to get up the hill, as there was going to be a tidal wave."
The tidal wave never came, but later she could look back and see the fire that swept through. "You couldn't get anywhere near it," she said.
There was a sense of displacement, bewilderment and not knowing what to do. "It was disorganised - everybody was wandering around, unable to do anything. You felt helpless and slightly numb."
She passed people walking around with blood streaming down their faces, and others who were helping.
"It wasn't so bad further along Marine Parade where the houses were damaged and had lost their chimneys and the preserves were off the shelf."
Mrs Williams' father had died 12 years earlier and her mother was working in Napier South. Her sister Kathleen had been at the Technical College, opposite the Catholic Church.
One brother had been on night duty and sleeping at home and the other was delivering groceries in the suburbs. Once the family were back together at home they were directed to Nelson Park where tents and a canteen had been erected.
"There were lots of aftershocks through the night - the only one that slept was our grandmother," she said.
After three days the women were evacuated to Palmerston North, where Jim, the eldest had been transferred with the Post Office.
They were temporarily housed at a relative's house, "but there were too many" and the family shifted to a temporary camp at Palmerston North Showgrounds before returning to Napier a few months later.
Before the city was flattened to rebuild she was able to return to the skeletal remains of the Blythes building. Her younger brother Jack had been part of a demolition gang and had the job of retrieving accounting books from out of the store safe.