disasters

On Tuesday 22 February 2011 at 12.51 p.m. Christchurch was badly damaged by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake, which killed 185 people and injured several thousand. Read more...

The mine exploded at 3.45 p.m. on Friday 19 November 2010. Twenty-nine of the 31 men underground died immediately or shortly afterwards from the blast or because of the toxic atmosphere this generated. Read more...

On 4 September 2010 a plane crashed soon after taking off from Fox Glacier airstrip, killing all nine people on board. The Walter Fletcher FU-24 was piloted by 33-year-old Chaminda Senadhira and carried four skydiving instructors and four skydivers who had been touring the West Coast on a Kiwi Experience bus trip. Read more...

The earthquake struck at 4.35 a.m. on Saturday 4 September and was felt by many people in the South Island and the southern North Island. There was considerable damage in central Canterbury, especially in Christchurch, but no loss of life. Read more...

An Air NZ Airbus A320 crashed off the coast of France. All seven people on board, including five New Zealanders, were killed. It was 29 years to the day since Air NZ Flight TE901 had crashed in Antarctica, killing all 257 on board Read more...

Six students and a teacher from Elim College died in a flash flood while canyoning in the Mangatepopo Stream, Tongariro National Park. Read more...

Cyclone Bola, one of the most damaging cyclones to hit New Zealand, struck Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne–East Cape in March 1988 Read more...

A record one-day total of up to 84.8 mm of rain caused extensive surface flooding in the streets of Invercargill, Riverton, Ōtautau, Tūātapere and Bluff. Read more...

Flight TE901, an Air New Zealand sightseeing flight over Antarctica, crashed into the lower slopes of Mt Erebus, near Scott Base, killing all 257 passengers and crew on board. Read more...

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake centred near Īnangahua Junction, 40 km east of Westport, struck at 5.24 a.m., shaking many people from their beds. Read more...

The ferry Wahine, en route from Lyttelton with 734 passengers and crew on board, struck Barrett Reef at the entrance to Wellington Harbour during a ferocious storm. Fifty-two lives were lost. Read more...

Nineteen men were killed when an explosion ripped through the Strongman coal mine at Rūnanga. An inquiry found that safety regulations had not been followed and a shot hole for a charge had been incorrectly fired. Read more...

All 23 passengers and crew were killed in what is still New Zealand's worst internal civil aviation accident. Helicopters were used for the first time in the search and rescue operation that followed. Read more...

All hands were lost when the modern coastal freighter Holmglen foundered off the South Canterbury coast. The cause of the tragedy was never established Read more...

The worst railway disaster in New Zealand's history occurred on Christmas Eve 1953, when the Wellington-Auckland night express plunged into the flooded Whangaehu River at Tangiwai. Of the 285 people on board, 151 were killed. Read more...

Carrying New Zealand troops to the Korean War, the 38-year-old Lyttelton–Wellington ferry Wahine ran aground in the Arafura Sea. There were no casualties but the ship became a total loss. Read more...

Twenty yachts left Wellington for Lyttelton in a race to celebrate Canterbury's centenary. The fleet ran into a severe southerly storm and only one yacht officially finished the race. Two others were lost, along with their 10 crew. members Read more...

The Lockheed Electra airliner ZK-AGK Kaka went missing in poor weather on a flight from Palmerston North to Hamilton. Searchers did not reach the wreckage for a week. Read more...

Three people were killed, 80 injured and about 150 buildings badly damaged by New Zealand's deadliest recorded tornado. The damage was estimated at more than £1 million. Read more...

On 18 November 1947 Ballantyne's, a Christchurch department store that was a local institution, was razed by one of the worst fires in New Zealand's history. The bodies of the 41 victims were buried at Ruru Lawn Cemetery, Bromley, after a civic funeral. Read more...

The liner, carrying 400 passengers, struck Barrett Reef in Wellington Harbour on 19 January. Only an unusually long spell of fine weather - dubbed 'Wanganella weather' by locals - saved it from becoming a total wreck. Read more...

Ten United States Navy personnel were drowned off Paekākāriki near Wellington during a beach landing exercise. Read more...

The Cromwell-Dunedin express, travelling at speed, derailed at Hyde, killing 21 people and injuring 47. The driver was later found guilty of manslaughter. Read more...

It was New Zealand's worst naval tragedy. When the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Neptune struck enemy mines and sank off Libya  early on the morning of 19 December 1941, more than 750 men lost their lives. Among them were 150 New Zealanders Read more...

Disaster struck during the hurried evacuation of Allied forces from Greece when a large number of civilians and Commonwealth troops, including New Zealanders, were killed while they were boarding the Greek yacht Hellas at the port of Piraeus, near Athens. Read more...

A sudden cloudburst sent a 5-m wall of water surging through a railway construction camp in the Kopuawhara Valley, near Māhia, drowning 21 people. Read more...

The engineer-in-charge and the overseer were killed when the second avalanche to hit the Homer tunnel project in less than 12 months struck without warning. Read more...

All three people on board a Dominion Airlines Desoutter were killed in a crash near Wairoa. The airline had helped maintain contact between the areas ravaged by the recent Hawke's Bay earthquake and the rest of New Zealand. Read more...

New Zealand's deadliest earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, destroyed much of central Napier and Hastings and killed more than 250 people. Read more...

Early hours in the morning the express crashed into a landslip at Ōngarue in the King Country. Seventeen people were killed, the first major loss of life on New Zealand railways. Read more...

Ten New Zealand soldiers were killed when they were hit by a train at Bere Ferrers in southern England. The accident occurred as troops from the 28th Reinforcements for the NZ Expeditionary Force were being transported from Plymouth to Sling Camp on Salisbury Plain. Read more...

Thirty-two New Zealanders, including 10 nurses, were killed when the troop transport Marquette was torpedoed by a German U-boat. Read more...

At 7.20 a.m. an explosion at Ralph's mine on Raynor Rd rocked Huntly. It was caused by a miner's naked acetylene cap-lamp igniting firedamp (methane gas given off by coal) Read more...

On 10 September 1914, 10 miners working on White Island were killed when part of the crater wall collapsed, causing a landslide Read more...

Although no New Zealanders were aboard the world’s largest passenger ship when it sank in the chilly North Atlantic with appalling loss of life due to a lack of lifeboats, the country followed the news closely. Read more...

The Picton-Wellington ferry SS Penguin struck rocks in Cook Strait and sank in heavy seas off a rugged, isolated coast. Only 30 of the 102 people on board survived. Read more...

Killed by blast and gas, the victims were almost half of Brunner's underground workforce. It is still the worst industrial accident in New Zealand history. Read more...

Only weeks earlier the glamorous steamer had set a record time for the Tasman crossing from Sydney to Auckland. A Court of Enquiry blamed the captain for the disaster, which cost 121 lives. Read more...

The eruption lasted six hours and caused massive destruction. Several villages were destroyed, along with most of the famous silica hot springs known as the Pink and White Terraces. Around 120 people, nearly all Māori, lost their lives Read more...

The steamer Tararua, en route from Port Chalmers to Melbourne, struck a reef at Waipapa Point, Southland. Of the 151 passengers and crew on board, 131 were lost, including 12 women and 14 children. Read more...

Four children were killed and 13 adults injured when two rail carriages were blown off the tracks by severe winds on a notoriously exposed part of the Rimutaka Incline railway. This was the first major loss of life on New Zealand’s railways. Read more...

An underground explosion at Kaitangata, South Otago, killed 34 coal miners. The accident led to stricter controls on mining. Read more...

The ‘Great Flood’ of 1878 killed at least three people and thousands of animals as it swept across the southern South Island Read more...

En route to Auckland laden with immigrants, the Cospatrick caught fire off the Cape of Good Hope. The tragedy has been described as New Zealand's worst civil disaster. Read more...

A cyclone swept south across the country from Saturday 1st. By the time it moved away on Tuesday 4th, more than 40 people had been killed. Read more...

Sailing from Melbourne to London, the General Grant hit cliffs on the west coast of the main island in the subantarctic Auckland Islands. Fifteen of the 83 people on board survived the sinking, but only 10 of them were ultimately rescued 18 months later. Read more...

The paddle steamer City of Dunedin left Wellington at around 5 p.m. on Saturday 20 May. It was never heard from again and no trace was ever found of its 25 crew and at least 22 passengers. Read more...

Approximately 25 gold miners died on the Arrow diggings, north-east of Queenstown, as a result of flash floods after 24 hours of heavy rain that also melted much of the snow from the surrounding ranges. Read more...

The Royal Navy steam corvette HMS Orpheus was wrecked on the treacherous Manukau Harbour bar. Of the 259 men on board, 189 lost their lives in New Zealand's worst maritime disaster. Read more...

A magnitude 8.2 earthquake lifted the southern end of the Rimutaka Range by 6 m. Land raised from the harbour now forms part of Wellington's CBD. Read more...

Twenty-six lives were lost when the barque Maria was wrecked near Cape Terawhiti. This provided more ammunition for Wellington settlers who were trying to convince the government of the need for a lighthouse. Read more...

The Ngāti Tūwharetoa village of Te Rapa on the south-western shore of Lake Taupō was obliterated in this landslide. Sixty people were killed, including the paramount chief Mananui, Te Heuheu Tūkino II Read more...

The fate of the brig Sophia Pate, wrecked on a sandbar at the entrance to Kaipara Harbour with the loss of 21 lives, highlighted the dangers faced by early migrants to New Zealand in poorly charted coastal waters. Read more...