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Twenty-five gold miners lost their lives as flash floods raged along the Shotover River, north-east of Queenstown, on 26 July 1863.
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These are the disasters of NZ
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On 17 June an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale struck the north of the South Island, killing 17 people. The shock was felt throughout New Zealand but centered on the Murchison area, where it caused massive landslides.
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On 2 August a US Liberator transport aircraft carrying enemy internees to Australia crashed into a mangrove swamp adjacent to Whenuapai airfield, killing 15 of the 30 people on board: nine Japanese (three women, two men and four children), three Thai students, and three members of the crew.
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On 4 June the Cromwell–Dunedin express derailed near Hyde, Central Otago, with the loss of 21 lives.
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On 24 December a North Island main trunk express plunged off the Tangiwai bridge into the Whangaehu River. The bridge had been fatally weakened by a lahar from Mt Ruapehu’s crater lake. Of the 285 people on board, 151 were killed. This is New Zealand’s worst rail disaster. See
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At 5.37 p.m. on 16 February 1986, the Soviet cruise liner Mikhail Lermontov hit rocks off Cape Jackson in the Marlborough Sounds.With its hull sliced open in three places, the 155-m vessel limped towards Port Gore, where it finally sank at 10.45 p.m. A flotilla of small craft, the inter-island ferry Arahura and the LPG tanker Tarihiko rescued all but one of the 738 passengers and crew. Refrigeration engineer Pavel Zaglyadimov drowned.