New Zealand Earthquake...

[gameboy9]

It has come to my attention that there was a big-time 7.4 magnitude earthquake near Christchurch, New Zealand. Those who know our members well may know that Mahlemiut, BeeJay, and Barra, and a couple others live in New Zealand. I do believe that Mahlemiut lives on the northern island, not the southern island where Christchurch is... but I'm not sure where exactly BeeJay is. Barra, however, does live in Christchurch, according to the members list on this board.

I hope everybody's OK... those who are affected are in my thoughts and prayers.

[The TJT]

"Police said there had been damage to buildings and roads as well as power cuts, but no casualties were reported."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11183685

[mahlemiut]

Beejay lives in Christchurch, so hopefully he's okay. Maybe he'll post here once power and phone services are restored, although from the sounds of it, that could be quite a while. There is still some cellphone coverage, but that's being pretty much overwhelmed.

[BeeJay]

Power got restored to our suburb about 40 minutes ago. So far there are no known fatalities but two people are in intensive care, which is quite amazing considering it was a 7.4 earthquake, centered 30km west of Christchurch and a relatively shallow, at least in earthquake terms, 10km deep.

It was the scariest earthquake I've ever been in, with the house shaking so much you were continually fighting to regain your balance even though I was holding tight to a doorframe with my arms wrapped around one of our younger girls.

I've just spent to last 1½ hours shovelling heavy water saturated mud off our driveway that was pushed up by "mud-volcanoes" either side of our driveway from way down deep underground as it looks like no mud/dirt I've ever seen before.

Our neighbour's Mum's house, a relatively new "over 60's unit" just 100m away is going to have to be demolished as parts of the house have risen/dropped by over 30cm.

There are also roads around Christchurch that have risen or sunk by over 1m leaving nasty looking gashes etc, and some of the lower lying areas of Christchurch have some bad flooding from the liquefaction of the underlying ground and burst water mains and residents are probably going to be evacuated or have already self-evacuated.

Cheers,
BeeJay.

[Q. T. Quazar]

My best wishes to you guys... glad to hear you and yours are safe.

[BeeJay]

We're starting to get sick of aftershocks that are as large as what we'd previously had said "that was a good one"... well over 50 aftershocks and counting, including another 4 in the last 30 mintues !!!

Spent another 3 hours today shovelling sludge from mud-volcanoes in our back yard.... and I took the man-hole cover off and had a look under our house to see more, even larger mud-volcanoes under there.... who knows how I'm going to deal to that sludge given how hard it has been to move the stuff that is more easily accessible..... it also smells horrible, so I don't think we can just leave it under there...

Cheers,
BeeJay.

[mahlemiut]

Around 90 aftershocks so far... http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10671497

[mahlemiut]

300 aftershocks and counting now...
State of emergency has been extended for another 7 days, after a 5.1 aftershock this morning at a depth of just 6km...
Power is out again in some areas...

[BeeJay]

Yup, that 5.1 this morning definitely made everyone jumpy again today. It was quite a lot worse than most of the 300+ aftershocks that we've had, especially given it's close proximity to Christchurch both horizontally and vertically and given that it knocked out power again to some suburbs. They've closed the tunnel through to the Port of Lyttleton again until it can be checked out, and they'll have to "start again" with building checks in town to make sure that buildings that were previously considered safe are still safe. We had a presenter from Aussie at work today, and he said he had the crap scared out of him with the 5.1 shake so can only imagine what the 7.1 shake must have felt like!!!

They've downgraded the original quake from 7.4 to "only" 7.1 instead.

Cheers,
BeeJay.

[BeeJay]

Things are finally starting to calm down on the aftershock front, at least to a more manageable level!!

If you're interested in seeing a timeline of the 721 earthquakes we've had over the last couple of weeks visit the following page: http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/

Or, if you want the raw data, visit: http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/qua ... uakes.html

Apparently the access to the geonet site has gone up significantly from their usual daily hit rate in the thousands, to something approaching 60 million hits a day during the height of the aftershock period!!

Cheers,
BeeJay.

[BeeJay]

I meant to say, the following photo gives a good example of how much movement there was along some parts of the fault line.

http://www.geonet.org.nz/images/news/20 ... t_0564.jpg

Cheers,
BeeJay.

[Barra]

Good to hear you managed OK through the earthquake. I however, live in Dunedin now and did when this earthquake hit (hadnt been on here in a while to update) for those who dont know where that is, its about 4 hours south of Christchurch. It woke me up though, the house shaking and banging, so I hate to think how it was up there. Good news is the aftershocks seem to be gradually declining in frequency.

Andrew

[mahlemiut]

Another major quake has hit Christchurch again, not much more than 10 or 15 minutes ago. Phone lines are down again, but there are few details as yet.

[Barra]

Did not feel it down here in Dunedin, but some people have said they felt it in invercargill. The videos on One News suggest damage is similar and may be even worse compared to the September quake.

[mahlemiut]

Only 6.3, compared to the original 7.1, but reports suggest that it felt much more violent, and done more damage, than the original.