Eighty-five years ago a small boy named Maurice Aldridge was at Hastings Primary School when he heard a "terrible noise".
Born and bred in Hastings he was a firsthand witness to the 1931 earthquake.
"I remember the quake. A terrible noise. I kept falling over on my hands and knees. I remember one of the nuns Sister Isidore, she ran out - and I looked up and the spire of the old church was waving like a reed in the wind."
What bought the 90-year-old to the offices of Hawke's Bay Today was his desire to share a set of single page Herald Tribunes printed in the aftermath of the disaster.
He said at the time his mother collected the special "Earthquake Editions", of which he still has all but two editions.