I was woken up this morning by some fairly substantial shaking. I have been in only one earthquake before, a minor shake in the UK where a man’s leg was injured by a falling chimney. This was slightly different. The shaking increased in intensity and lasted for what felt like a long time (thirty seconds I think – time is hard to gauge when you’ve just been woken up in a situation like that). I could hear the sounds of bottles and objects falling over, my thoughts were “woah – this is awesome!” followed by “I hope this doesn’t get more serious” to, afterwards, “Bugger, the aftermath of this is probably going to mess up my life for a time”.
There were a lot of aftershocks and I sat back in bed and soaked them in. The earth grumbled away with rumbles and shakes, almost like it was threatening to start back up again. I can still feel them now but they are quite rare.
I am living near Lyttelton, which is on the Banks Peninsula to the East of Christchurch, separated by mountains. I don’t know how much those mountains might have absorbed or shielded the quake but I imagine I got off pretty easy. No doubt I shall hear numerous stories in work on Monday.
On the plus side, right after the quake, the power was out. I was able to step outside my door and see the milky way on a clear night – completely unperturbed by light pollution; it was beautiful.
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck off New Zealand's South Island, the US Geological Survey has said.
The epicentre was 55km (35 miles) north-west of Christchurch, at a depth of 12 km (7.5 miles), it added.
Police said there had been widespread damage to buildings and roads as well as power cuts. Two men were seriously injured by falling masonry and glass.
A state of emergency was later declared in Christchurch, New Zealand's second largest city with a 386,000 population.
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end of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, and above an area of the Earth's crust where the Pacific Plate converges with the Indo-Australian Plate.
The country experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which only around 20 have a magnitude in excess of 5.0.
The last fatal earthquake was in 1968, when a 7.1-magnitude tremor killed three people on the South Island's western coast.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11183685
Posted on: Saturday, September 04, 2010 12:47 PM