Wellington - About 50 residents of a village on the shores of New Zealand's Lake Taupo who were evacuated after earthquakes threatened to unleash a landslide were given the all-clear Thursday to go home. The people of Waihi, the ancestral home of a Maori tribe, agreed to evacuate the village Monday night after officials warned that a swarm of quakes, heavy rains and increased geothermal activity made it too dangerous to stay.
Geothermal steam rose out of cracks in the 1,300-metre-high Kakaramea volcanic peak above the village, which was buried 163 years ago in an avalanche that killed 60 people, including the tribe's paramount chief.
Civil defence officials said the villagers could go home Thursday evening after seismologists who placed monitoring equipment in the geothermal area on a fault line above the village known as the "Steaming Hills" said it had stabilized.
They said an examination showed no significant signs of cracking or fallen rocks and that birds that flew away after the quakes had returned to the area.
A 65-year-old resident, Marie Otimi, told the Dominion Post newspaper this week that she could not bear to think of not being allowed back to the village where she had lived all her life.
"Generations have lived here and are buried here," she said. "I want it to carry on for my grandchildren to enjoy."
Waihi sits at the southern end of Lake Taupo, New Zealand's largest lake, about halfway between the capital, Wellington, and the biggest city, Auckland.
