…Big earthquake here in New Zealand. The big one was centered down south, but it was felt over most of the country. And there have been related shocks since then all morning.
I was taking part in a sleep study at hospital. And I had just fallen asleep. And it was the deepest, richest sleep I had had in years.
And an hour and a half later the ground began to move. Violently.
I’ve lived in Wellington all my life, and earthquakes are normal here. But this was BIG. and LONG. My parents house was in a Tsunami zone and they have no transport: so I told the nurse I had to go and raced home in case we had to move. All looks okay so far here but if the sirens go we can get going in a couple of minutes.
Two dead, but no details yet how. The slips on the coastal highway look to be quite definitively bad. My family all live in Dunedin, so they’re safe at least.
I have a suspicion this quake will be a precursor to a worse one. I hope I’m wrong.
I hope the damages are limited compared to the earthquake there a few years ago; good on you heading to family.
You’ll get to retry the sleep study, surely.
Safe and peaceful wishes to you and yours!
There’s some incredible images circulating after the New Zealand quake. I never realized it could reshape the land in such a dramatic way.
Lot of destruction. These people effected will need a lot of help. Lots of tourists need rescuing too.
Three cows stranded on a clump of remaining ground. Just incredible how the ground has disappeared around them. I hope someone can rescue them. They won’t last long without water.
My brother sent some photos through, he’s got to work out how to get freight trucks through roads like this:
And my parent’s house was halfway through its rebuild from the 2011 earthquake, it’s taken them years to get a settlement so they could start rebuilding and now this. This is not what I’d hoped for their retirement years.
My wife talked to cousins that live in NZ, all are okay. One cousin in Sefton had a shed fall over and their TV fell off the stand it was on. 3 years ago at this time my wife and I were in New Zealand and saw much of the damage in and around Christchurch. And seeing the road to Kaikoura wiped out gave me chills, we drove that road on our road trip around the South Island. We are planning on going back at Christmas time in 2017, don’t know if this will make us change our minds.
I took a 10-day vacation on the South Island in 2015, wonderful place with wonderful people, but I noted that Christchurch was still mindful of the damage done by the 2011 earthquake (I hope the church they were restoring came though ok). I was probably on that road to Kaikoura with my tour, most roads a 2-lane and if they are disrupted, detours will be long and expensive.
AHA! Divine Retribution!
p.s. - never have a grade of more than 1:1 (45 degrees) on road cut-throughs. 2:1 (30 degrees) much better.
See: Devil’s Slide CA (just south of Half Moon Bay). It has been replaced after decades of argument.
…the only casualty is the television. “Bang crash gone!” Apart from the cat being a bit jumpy all else is good in our household. Thank you for your thoughts.
I know I’m being oversensitive and people mean well, but I hope those in this thread will allow me to just vent a little…
Coming up to me and saying “Oh, isn’t it awful” then proceeding to tell me about your wonderful NZ holiday or your friend’s wonderful NZ holiday then walking away without even asking me if my family are safe… yeah, that’s not exactly thoughful.
