At 10:47 am on 3 February 1931, a quake centred 15 kilometres north of Napier struck New Zealand's east coast. The shaking brought down buildings across Napier and Hastings, and fires then burned through Napier's business district. With 256 dead and thousands injured, it is still New Zealand's deadliest natural disaster. The rebuilding that followed became one of the country's first large-scale efforts to design disaster risk out of a city, and it gave Napier the Art Deco streetscape it is known for today.
The main shock lasted two and a half minutes and was felt across most of New Zealand, with reliable reports coming from as far south as Timaru. Seismographs recorded 525 aftershocks over the following two weeks. In Napier the collapse of the fire station buried the fire engines under rubble, so they could not be used when fires broke out in the city centre soon after the quake. Much of the commercial heart of the city burned down.
The earthquake also changed the land itself. It raised the coast around Napier and lifted the bed of the Ahuriri Lagoon out of the sea, leaving new dry ground where there had been tidal water. Farms, suburbs and Hawke's Bay's airport were later built on that land.
Napier was rebuilt quickly, in the style of the early 1930s. Its low, reinforced-concrete buildings with geometric Art Deco decoration were designed with earthquakes in mind. Together they now make up one of the most complete Art Deco townscapes in the world.