Monday 6 September 2010

EQNZ Christchurch Earthquake

* Tap Tap Tap - testing testing - knocks over microphone - muffled inaudible comments..... *

Attention! Attention! Many anipals will know that New Zealand has had a major earthquake over the past few days.  I thought it might be good to explain a bit about us, where it struck and how the country is affected.

New Zealand is made up of two large islands - North Island and South Island - the North Island is as big as Great Britain, just to give you a rough idea of size.

The main area of the recent 7.1 quake was Christchurch (shortened to Chch often) - this is on the South Island sort of above the middle - see the map below or the link; see pictures of the damage done here in this article.  There are a lot of older historic buildings in Chch (old in NZ terms that is....)

New Zealand is on the edge of what has been nick-named the 'Ring of Fire' a set of volcano and fracture thingies that means we shake a lot, so much so that people often don't notice small ones after a while MOL!  Sometimes NZ has big ones like Christchurch - Gisborne had one not so long ago.

Odd thing is  Chch doesn't usually have big ones at all.  This is why there are a lot of brick buildings, and why some of them fell down.  Around my patch most of the houses are wood - this moves a bit more in quakes 'cos it's more flexible.  Thankfully most people are safe.



View Larger Map

3 comments:

  1. OMC! We are glad most are safe. Old brick buildings are bad. We live in California, and they have made laws to retrofit or tear down un-reinforced brick structures.

    Lizzy--'mom' to: Tigger, Munchkin, Jigsaw and Patches

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  2. Dear Friends, we are so very thankful that all our friends in NZ are okay. Thanks for posting the map - now I understand things better. I guess my state is sitting on a fault too, but we haven't felt any shocks in about 40 years. Must be very scary.

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  3. I sure am glad to hear that you are alright and I hope the shakey things leave you alone for a long time!

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