Christchurch NZ hit by major quake

[Reploid Productions]

And they said they expect there to be an aftershock just as, if not more powerful, than the initial earthquake. Sucks to be in Christchurch

Yeah, typically for the first few weeks after a major quake that size you're going to have fairly regular 5.0 range aftershocks for the first few weeks, and the size and frequency will taper off as more time passes. Not fun for nerves already frayed by the initial quake, I'm sure!

[New Korongo]

These aftershocks are damn annoying

[Risottia]

Its apparently as strong a Haiti, but Christchurch has must more robust infrastructure and those tight ass building rules seemed to have paid off.

Yep. The Beeb reports of two injured people only and no casualties.
Thumbs up to the Kiwis and their antiseismic rules: as proven many times (just think of L'Aquila and Haiti), earthquakes don't kill directly: it's the shitty buildings that kill.

[Risottia]

I'm not sure what the state of the water and sewage are here - water is coming out of the taps, and waste products are getting flushed away,

An advice: just to be sure, don't drink tap water (unless you boiled it previously), until the authorities check sewers and aqueducts and declare it's safe to drink.
AND if you use gas (syngas, methane, w/e) to cook - expecially gas coming from subterranean pipes, or from pipes in the wall, don't use it until the pipes have been checked, too.

Mainly I just wish these damned aftershocks would STFU and die. They're annoying as all hell.

If we have to take the last major earthquakes as examples, brace yourself for more aftershocks and for a long time.

[UNIverseVERSE]

Whats with all the earthquakes! Haiti, Chile now New Zealand!
anyway i hope their okay

Absolutely normal. The expected value over the last couple of decades is close to two fatal quakes per month.

There was, however, a particularly quiet year in 09.

[Dewhurst-Narculis]

miracle no-one died... Also across the ditch, rising floodwater are threating Creswick and many other towns! its all happening in our little corner of the globe!

[Albrante]

miracle no-one died... Also across the ditch, rising floodwater are threating Creswick and many other towns! its all happening in our little corner of the globe!

We Oceanians are a nice bunch, what higher force suddenly decided he didn't like us?

[Charlotte Ryberg]

The even really shook me: I know they are close to the statistical Ring of Fire but the scale of the damage at the town centre is incredible as if it was San Francisco.

[Dewhurst-Narculis]

oceania had a lot of seismic recently
4 in Victoria last year few around the islands and now a biggy in NZ

[Charlotte Ryberg]

oceania had a lot of seismic recently
4 in Victoria last year few around the islands and now a biggy in NZ

Also quite a few biggies from last year, which resulted in tsunamis.

[Dewhurst-Narculis]

oceania had a lot of seismic recently
4 in Victoria last year few around the islands and now a biggy in NZ

Also quite a few biggies from last year, which resulted in tsunamis.

you aussie too?

[UberWeegeeia]

Yipes...
At first I thought this hit a church, not New Zealand...
Anyways, good luck to you Kiwi's, and stay safe.

[Nobel Hobos]

New Zealand is the new Haiti. D:

I doubt it. Better building codes.

[EvilDarkMagicians]

Hope you are all OK.

[Angermanland]

Id say lets offer aid but seeing as they backed out of that alliance with the US and AUS in the 70's i do not think it is right to send aid.

actually, the US suspended their obligations to New Zealand under that treaty when NZ said it did not want nuclear armed ships in it's ports.

ANYTHING else was allowed in, but the US government did not want to do anything that might make it known which of their ships did and didn't have nuclear weapons.

New Zealand did NOT back out of that alliance. the US partially did. the NZ/Australia part is still in force last i checked, as is the US/Australia element.

all that aside: earthquake:
looting: a couple of guys taking advantage of the situation and promptly getting arrested. that was it.
quake: 7.1 magnitude,10km deep, 30km out from the center of the city (even if the mayor Does keep saying '30 miles from the edge of the city'... :S )
utilities: sewers are busted. everything was going straight into the rivers for a while because the pumps for the treatment plant were out due to lack of power. not sure what's up with the pumps now but the pipes are still broken lots of places. power's now back for most of the city. phones came back for most places within minutes. water's back in most places but Not safe to drink without boiling it first due to broken pipes and the sewer issue. Internet depends on ISP (some people seem to have got it back with the phones, I personally didn't get it back until this morning).
deaths: zero. (discounting an unrelated plane crash that got kinda merged into the reporting due to the limited information available that hadn't been presented a whole bunch of times already about the quake when the plane crash happened)
serious injuries: two last i heard, one guy had a chimney collapsed on his leg, if I'm remembering rightly, and another man had glass fall on him, which did some serious damage.
damage: well, the central business district has a Lot of damage, lots of older shops are wrecked... houses vary of course, but single story houses seem to mostly be fine unless flooded. brick buildings... let's just say i would be astonished if anyone would buy a brick building off you in this country for any reason other than demolishing and replacing it now. they pretty much just collapsed.

here, the only damage we took was a window that had been replaced the previous day (double glazing was installed) and was stored in the garage fell over and broke. that was it. some of our neighbours had more stuff fall over/down in their houses, and a couple of cheap extensions took some damage apparantly...

the area i live in is built on a one of the lowest points that used to be swampy. it Should have been hit badly... but the thing is, a wooden frame building built on a single concrete pad apparently... floats... under those conditions

update as i was writing this: we've apparently had about 500 buildings totaled, at least in the city, mostly in the CBD.

Edit: both the Anglican and Catholic cathedrals are completely intact. a lot of the churches in the city are either badly damaged or within the area cordoned off in the CBD. newer ones further out are probably mostly ok by the sound of it.

[Greed and Death]

Id say lets offer aid but seeing as they backed out of that alliance with the US and AUS in the 70's i do not think it is right to send aid.

actually, the US suspended their obligations to New Zealand under that treaty when NZ said it did not want nuclear armed ships in it's ports.

They also forbid nuclear powered ships, and at that point the entire blue water fleet of the US navy was nuclear powered. So in effect NZ had blocked the US navy from entering port rendering the treaty void as the quid in quid pro quo of the treaty was the US getting to us NZ ports.

[New Korongo]

Many buildings are already weakned, now we have severe wind warnings, luckily my house is well built.

[Angermanland]

Id say lets offer aid but seeing as they backed out of that alliance with the US and AUS in the 70's i do not think it is right to send aid.

actually, the US suspended their obligations to New Zealand under that treaty when NZ said it did not want nuclear armed ships in it's ports.

They also forbid nuclear powered ships, and at that point the entire blue water fleet of the US navy was nuclear powered. So in effect NZ had blocked the US navy from entering port rendering the treaty void as the quid in quid pro quo of the treaty was the US getting to us NZ ports.

*thinks* see, i remember that being not quite right. It may have been that we wouldn't let the nuclear powered ships dock but would happily have them anchor and resupply them or something. or it may have been that it was initially 'no nukes' followed by negotiation where in the government was willing to allow nuclear powered ships but the US government didn't like anything but 'let everything in'. some research would be required, but last time i heard anything official on that, it was not as bad as it seemed, and the reality was that the absolute ban on US warships entering came from the US military not wanting to give away what was and wasn't nuclear armed(/powered?), Not the NZ government.

that said, that's nothing to do with the earthquake, so we should leave that there. It's completely irrelevant as to whether or not aid should be sent (especially when NZ troops come along on the US's random wars in various capacities often enough anyway), which is even More irrelevant when you take into account that, so far at least, no external aid is even needed. earthquakes are something we're very well prepared to deal with (floods, on the other hand, our farmers probably would have Loved aid money for )

[The Voltania]

Jesus, the mantle isn't happy with us.

Hope those Kiwis are alright.

[Reploid Productions]

And another USGS link, but if you felt it, they like to get reports on how it shook in your location, and you can submit your reports here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ ... index.html

[Birnadia]

Is NZ even anywhere near a fault line?

[Dewhurst-Narculis]

Is NZ even anywhere near a fault line?

yeah its on a plate boundary, tons of volcanoes and the like

[Angermanland]

Is NZ even anywhere near a fault line?

north island is full of volcanoes. south has less and they're dormant, but does have teh southern alps (really tall mountains) due to being, as D-N said above, on a plate boundry.

oddly, it was one of the minor faults that went off, not the major ones though. a major fault would have produced a more powerful quake... further away from major population centers and probably deeper, both reducing it's effects.

actually, Canterbury (the region Christchurch is in) is pretty much riddled with fault lines. to make it more fun, the harbour is built inside a dormant volcano, which Christchurch is partially on the outside of. and we're perfectly lined up with a pass that produces such wonderful gales... (it's doing that right now, actually).

[Reploid Productions]

oddly, it was one of the minor faults that went off, not the major ones though. a major fault would have produced a more powerful quake... further away from major population centers and probably deeper, both reducing it's effects.

That doesn't really surprise me- looking at fault line maps it looks like the major ones have a number of snags where the fault changes direction. Instead of just simply grinding past one another (or hitting head-on/subducting) the plates are smashing into each other around those snags, creating that metric fuckton of smaller faultlines. Same sort of scenario as my area with the San Andreas fault; San Francisco straddles the thing and is vulnerable to very large quakes, but down here in LA we've got hundreds of different fault lines criss-crossing the region, and sometimes we don't even know a fault line is there until it goes off and causes a few billion dollars in damages. (I'm looking at you, Northridge 1994!)

Actually, on this USGS map you can see the snag where the plate boundary is running northeast-to-southwest and then turns more sharply westward.

[Militsia]

It is really sad for those affected, but I say that we should not send any aid to New Zealand.