Region remembers and empathises

Just a couple of weeks after the Christchurch earthquake last September, Dean Helen Jacobi, of Napier's Waiapu St John's Cathedral, stood before a large congregation of anxious locals in the southern city's cathedral.
She was in the city to attend a deans conference and stepped forward to give a service at the cathedral. It had come through unscathed due to a strengthening refurbishment some years earlier.
She told the congregation that, like Hawke's Bay, in 80 years' time the trauma of what nature had delivered that day would still be remembered.
Dean Jacobi said it was clear the people of Christchurch had been left fearful in the wake of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake which shook the region at 4.48am on a clear early spring morning.
"But they drew comfort from knowing their cathedral was not damaged. It gave great hope to them," she said.
Seeing the damage and speaking to people made her realise how traumatic the greater Hawke's Bay earthquake would had been. She has met many survivors of the '31 quake and never fails to be astonished at just how quickly the memories return.
"It was such an event in their lives that it seared itself into their minds - it is like a photo embedded there - so clear."
Dean Jacobi had also asked survivors if at the time they had blamed God for the death and destruction on February 3, 1931.
"They said no, they had not blamed God ... it was just a bad, terrible thing that happened."
Like the people of Christchurch who were thankful their cathedral had stood through the earthquake, they had been thankful churches had quickly got up and running again. Those who attended 80 years ago would not have all been deeply religious, she believed. "It was place of comfort for them. To be with others. A place of hope."
Dean Jacobi will be speaking at a survivors' afternoon tea in Napier next Thursday, as well as taking part in the city's commemorative service at the Sound Shell.
Four days of commemorations are planned from February 3, as a reflective prelude to the colourful Geon Art Deco Weekend set to spark into life on February 15.
It will be 80 years since the great quake, which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale and took the lives of 258 people, changed not only the lives of the region's populace, but the landscape itself.
The heart of Napier in particular was rebuilt according to the popular architectural styles of the day. Art Deco, now so globally cherished, rose from the ashes.
On February 3, there will be commemorative morning services in Napier and Hastings - with special significance at 46 minutes and 46 seconds after 10am, which was when the earthquake struck.
And as Dean Jacobi said, there would also be significance in that while the people of Hawke's Bay commemorate and remember what happened 80 years ago, the people of Christchurch are still struggling to come to terms with what has happened to their city.