Hi everyone,
I will post a fairly quick reply here ....
Yes, the earthquake was a pretty awful one .... much much worse for people in Canterbury than for me ....
I now live in New Plymouth - which is on the Western side of the North Island - It is 765km (475miles) from Canterbury - in the South Island (where the earthquake was centred), but we were woken up with a large amount of shaking, even the bathroom cabinet doors banged back and forth for a while.
A good friend of mine lives around 30km out of Christchurch - right where the earthquake was centred. She seriously thought her house was going to fall down on top of her. She said it was incredibly frightening, and all the aftershocks are not helping.
The most badly affected buildings are the historic old ones. If you take a look on
www.stuff.co.nz (that is a popular news site here in NZ) you will get an idea of what it all looks like.
It is amazing that no one was killed. Absolutely amazing!
As Kiwis we are used to earthquakes. New Zealand lies on top of a some major fault lines ..... our country pretty much sits on top of 2 tectonic plates - one is called the Pacific Plate, and other one I think is known as the Indian/Australian plate. Simplest explanation is when these 2 plates grate against each other - or ride up against each other the pressure builds to a certain point - the pressure has to be released somehow - and that seems to be when we get earthquakes. (No doubt someone else out there can probably explain this a whole lot better than me! .... )
But we are not used to fairly big earthquakes that cause lots of damage like this one.
We have VERY strict building codes - buildings are designed to withstand most large earthquakes - obviously the old buildings were built before this "modern knowledge" ....
My father is a civil engineer - he saw a lot of changes in the building codes during his working life.
I think what has affected many people with this most recent earthquake is that although we are constantly reminded to have an emergency kit put aside for "when a disaster occurs" many people haven't done this. Even BASIC things such as enough drinking water for several days, tinned food, blankets, torches, candles, transister radio to listen to news updates if the electricity is out etc, etc .
Even having an emergency exit plan for families to leave their home when something like this occurs ..... I guess it is a timely reminder for all of us.
My neatly packed "emergency kit" is all back at my old home several hundred kilometres away (we are just preparing to sell my home there) - a fat lot of good that emergency pack is to me when it is sitting in my old house! .... roll eyes here
Anyway, I am fine - but there a lot of families who have been affected by this earthquake, and my heart goes out to them.
Have a good week everyone.