Kaikoura Earthquake

At 12:02 a.m. on Monday morning there was a M7.5 earthquake outside of Hanmer Springs on the South Island.  Multiple faults ruptured at that time so there was almost two minutes of shaking.  My mom is visiting New Zealand while Ross is in Antarctica doing field work and we were both woken up by the earthquake.  Being the geologist that I am, I immediately got up and checked on GeoNet to see how big the earthquake was and where it was.  I could tell that it had been big but I wanted to see how big...  If you are interested, here are links to the USGS and GeoNet (latest info and earthquake report) regarding this earthquake.

Shake map from GeoNet

There have been over 1,200 aftershocks at this point (almost two days later), and there were an estimated 100,000 landslides around the country as a result of the earthquake and aftershocks.  A number of the aftershocks have been in the M4-5 range and there were even a couple that were M6.  Needless to say, there has been a lot of shaking going on around here over the last couple days.  I have been second guessing myself as to whether I felt an earthquake, a truck passing, or the gale force winds this evening...

A house at Bluff Station right on the Kekerengu fault line (photo by RNZ).
Line up the driveway to see the amount of motion along the fault.

My flat is on the third and top floor of an 1960's concrete building and we're located in the hills above Wellington.  Due to these factors, we didn't experience as much shaking as some of the high-rises and other buildings in downtown Wellington and along the waterfront, where there has been a lot of backfilling of the harbor over the years.  Nothing fell off of the shelves in my flat but the doors and cabinet doors were opening and closing and pictures were rattling on the walls. You could also hear a low rumbling for the duration of the shaking.

  

GeoNet Felt It Report

Monday morning I had to go down to the train station to pick up a bike that I had bought off of TradeMe (Kiwi equivalent to Craig's List, but less sketchy) and the central business district (CBD) of Wellington was like a ghost town.  Almost everything was closed and there were a number of broken windows, cracks in buildings, and broken or disarrayed items in shop windows.  Most of the buildings were checked for structural integrity on Monday, but building assessments continued into Tuesday.  The pictures below show some of the damage that we saw during our very limited time in the CBD.

There are at least two buildings in Wellington that sustained significant structural damage.  There is one building that is at risk of collapsing and another that is expected to be out of commission for several months to up to a year.  There was also damage along the waterfront causing commuter ferry services around Wellington Harbor to be cancelled.  The larger Interislander ferries that travel between the islands ended up spending the night anchored in Wellington Harbor due to damage at the ferry terminals both in Wellington and in Picton. 

To top it all off, there was a very large storm system that came through over the last couple days, bringing torrential rain fall and gale force winds.  Due to the rain, there has been massive flooding in the Wellington area and for a while today all of the roads out of Wellington were closed.  

Major flooding in Pauatahanui
Photo from Wellington - LIVE Facebook page

After all of the excitement, I finally pulled together an emergency preparedness kit (water, non-perishable food, flashlight, batteries, first aid kit, etc.) following the guidelines put forth by the NZ Civil Defense.  Ross and I had been talking about doing this since we got to New Zealand but just hadn't gotten around to it yet.  I'm not sure how thrilled my mom was about helping me carry canned goods and water back to my flat, but I'm now good to go should we get another earthquake or some other disaster.

If you want to help out with the relief effort, here is a list of ways that you can contribute.