Devastating landslide at Lake Taupō

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.

Te Rapa sat below the volcanic springs of Mt Kākaramea. The missionary Richard Taylor recorded that an ‘unusually rainy season occasioned a large landslip’ on the mountain. The slip dammed a stream which, three days later, ‘burst its barriers, and, with irresistible force, swept rocks, trees and earth with it into the lake’. Te Rapa was buried and only a few people managed to flee. A village named Waihī was established near the site but met a similar fate on the morning of 20 March 1910. When villagers heard something resembling cannon-fire, they rushed outside. A cloud of dust appeared as another enormous landslide came crashing down the valley. This time only one person was killed.

Image: Waihī area in the 1990s (Te Ara)