{"id":211243,"date":"2026-01-01T07:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/211243\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T07:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:36:06","slug":"fireworks-still-the-boom-attraction-on-new-years-eve-in-napier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/211243\/","title":{"rendered":"Fireworks still the boom attraction on New Year\u2019s Eve in Napier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Auckland covers band White Chapel Jak, in at least their third Napier New Year\u2019s Eve appearance, led the night\u2019s entertainment before the countdown<\/a> and traditional ringing of the Veronica Bell, the brass gift from Navy sloop the HMS Veronica after the 1931 Hawke\u2019s Bay earthquake.<\/p>\n

\"BonnieBonnie Hurunui from White Chapel Jak, the star act on New Year’s Eve at the Napier Soundshell. Photo \/ John Cowpland \/ Alphapix<\/p>\n

A police team was on hand on Wednesday night in case of trouble of the drunken type that affected New Year\u2019s Eve celebrations in the mid-late 1900s.<\/p>\n

Police said there were no significant incidents, even when a custody van, about six other police vehicles and more than a dozen staff arrived in Clive St East soon after 12.30pm.<\/p>\n

\"PolicePolice swarm an area of Clive Square East after reports of a fight soon after midnight. Photo \/ Doug Laing<\/p>\n

Onlookers said there had been a fight involving two men and it appeared one was arrested and the police presence was \u201ca job on the way back to base\u201d.<\/p>\n

At Mahia, crowd numbers were \u201cnowhere near as big as past years\u201d, according to community constable Chad Prentice.<\/p>\n

There was one arrest and a specialist police unit conducted about 800 driver breath tests, almost every vehicle in and out of the peninsula township, without a single failure.<\/p>\n

Police said there were 41 New Year\u2019s Eve arrests nationwide, 17 of them in the Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty area. New Year\u2019s Eve events in some other centres were cancelled because of stormy weather.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Hato Hone St John told Radio New Zealand the ambulance service responded to 177 incidents nationwide between 10pm and 3am, about 40% down on recent years.<\/p>\n

In Hawke\u2019s Bay, attention was soon turning to the possibility of heavy rain during the rest of the holiday period before the return to work for many on Monday.<\/p>\n

MetService on Thursday issued a \u201cheavy rain watch\u201d notice, for an area from north of Napier to Gisborne.<\/p>\n

The warning was for the 12 hours from noon to midnight on Saturday, with periods of heavy rain and the possibility of thunderstorms dropping 25-40mm of rain per hour.<\/p>\n

Doug Laing is a Hawke\u2019s Bay Today reporter with more than 40 years covering news events in the region, including New Year\u2019s Eve celebrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Auckland covers band White Chapel Jak, in at least their third Napier New Year\u2019s Eve appearance, led the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[83172,16424,15364,6461,33841,78,130,3607,117,111,43,139,69,90,13420,45608,6100,131,223,31785,42580,102,1530],"class_list":["post-211243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-attraction","tag-boom","tag-century","tag-eve","tag-fireworks","tag-in","tag-more","tag-napier","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-quarter","tag-sparking","tag-still","tag-than","tag-the","tag-tradition","tag-waterfront","tag-with","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}