[10] Today, this area is the location of Hawke's Bay Airport,[11] housing and industrial developments and farmland.

[citation needed] The fire continued to spread through adjoined wooden buildings, which led to the entire town being engulfed in flames by the afternoon.

[12] The wind at this point also picked up strength and began blowing from the east, pushing the fires back over the city.

[17] New Zealand's first commercial air disaster occurred six days after the quake, when a Dominion Airlines Desoutter monoplane crashed near Wairoa.

The small airline had been making three return trips a day between Hastings and Gisborne, carrying passengers and supplies.

[19] The Napier Daily Telegraph newspaper office was destroyed by the quake,[citation needed] and so was the Hawke's Bay Herald's printing facility in Hastings.

Nelson Park served as Napier's "evacuation centre" which was the site of many tents and was able to cater for over 1,000 people from a field kitchen.

[citation needed] The death toll might have been much higher had the Royal Navy ship HMS Veronica not been in port at the time.

The sailors joined survivors to fight the fires, rescue trapped people and help give them medical treatment.

Author Matthew Wright reported that "the power failed three seconds before the earthquake was felt in Napier.

[25] He added "Some inland parts of Hawke's Bay felt this aftershock more strongly than 3 February quake ... but 'there was no damage of any moment'.

In Wellington all but one of the clocks stopped working in the Dominion Observatory, and ceiling lights in the Evening Post offices swayed 'more vigorously' than they had the week before".

[25] The earthquake of 13 February 1931 is widely regarded as an aftershock of the larger event ten days earlier.

But Messrs Adams, Barnett and Hayes commenting on the rapid decline in the frequency of aftershocks in the Journal of Science & Technology stated, "The fresh outbreak on the 13th February, due to the severe shock on that date, may almost be regarded as a separate disturbance, although it probably arose from conditions produced by the original shock on the 3rd".

Aftershocks continued for several years, with the last major jolt shaking the Bay in April 1934.

[25][26] The government quickly realised that the Napier borough council would be overwhelmed with organising the rebuild and appointed two commissioners for this task, John Barton and Lachlan Bain Campbell.

[29] Several temporary structures were built following the earthquake, including the shopping centre commonly referred to as Tin Town in Clive Square.

Building regulations established as a result of this event mean that to this day, there are only four buildings in Hawke's Bay taller than five storeys, and as most of the region's rebuilding took place in the 1930s when Art Deco was fashionable, Hawke's Bay architecture is regarded today as being one of the finest collections of Art Deco in the world.

[34] At the time of the earthquake, there were no national emergency response organisations or legal provisions in case of such disaster, which was a hindrance to recovery.

As a result, new legislation had to be passed quickly,[35] such as the Hawke's Bay Earthquake Act 1931 which received assent on 28 April to give out loans for the rebuild.

[36] On the tenth anniversary of the earthquake, the New Zealand Listener reported that Napier had risen from the ashes like a phoenix.

[citation needed] The New Napier Carnival was held in January 1933 to celebrate the rebuild of the town,[12][37] which officially declared it reborn.

A. Louis Hay started designing a memorial for the site in 1932, which consists of an obelisk, a garden, the text "Their sun is gone down while it is yet day" and a written list of the victims known to be buried there.