The latest news on the New Zealand earthquake

There have been more than 1700 earthquakes and aftershocks since the big earthquake that hit us nearly three days ago. Plus storms, flooding and more on the way.

The good news is that there has been little loss of life. One person died in a building that collapsed, and another of a heart attack. Thankfully, so far as we know, that’s all.

Thanks for the messages of concern from Steemit friends. The reason I haven’t posted is that I’ve been on a 6 day training course and haven’t even been able to read much on my feed, let alone post. But @sift666 and I are both safe, and have had no property damage. Our families are all safe too. I managed to reply to a couple of posts about the earthquakes saying we're ok, but not everybody will have seen that.

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I don’t know how many fault lines we have in New Zealand, but this quake affected four of them, which is probably why it was felt right throughout the country.

We live in the Wellington region, some 200-300km north east of the worst quakes. One of the major fault lines runs right through the region. In 1860, a huge earthquake raised a lot of land up out of the water. Some of that is the CBD (Central Business District) and some is in Kilbirnie, where we live.

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I’m Wellington born and raised. We cut our teeth on stories of the Big One that will hit Wellington one day. Small quakes are comparatively common and we become acclimatised. Half the time I glance up from my desk, but don’t do anything further till I’ve established whether it’s going to keep going or not. Wellington is a windy city and sometimes it turns out to be just a gale force gust of wind. If it seems to be getting worse, I might amble over to a door frame.

This was different. It was 1 minute after midnight and I was just drifting off to sleep when it started. Instantly on high alert! Do I have to get up or not? It’s not stopping, it’s getting worse. The latest data seems to be that beside a large piece of furniture is safer that under one, or a door frame. So I rolled out of bed and onto the floor beside it. As I rolled, I got cramp in my leg. Have you ever tried to simultaneously roll yourself into a small ball, and stretch out your leg, cursing all the while? I don’t recommend it.

As the shaking continued for the longest I’ve ever experienced, I could feel my heart pounding. Was this the Big One? I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared.

After it finally stopped and I picked myself up off the floor, I was shaking, and kept shaking for nearly an hour afterwards. @sift666 just rolled over and went back to sleep. But I had to check Geonet and see what people were saying on social media. Eventually I stopped shaking and went back to bed and back to sleep for a few hours.

Where we are, in the eastern suburbs of Wellington, the worst we've seen has been little landslides. Although we’re only 15 minutes walk from the coast, we are on a hillside, and built on clay. Neighbours down on the flat, built on sand, had more breakages, and evacuated, in case of tsunami.

It turned out to be ok, but people weren’t taking any chances and there were traffic jams all the way up the hill in the small morning hours. This is time lapse photography of the beach near us. Not very large, though there were bigger ones down south.

In Wellington city, there has been quite a bit of damage. This building has split in two.

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Building inspectors are still doing the rounds of the high rise buildings, and checking them. One street is still cordoned off as a building there is severely damaged and could come down at any time.

An apartment block has been evacuated today. And many other buildings in the CBD are expected to be closed for months, due to damage.

The city was almost deserted on Monday when I went into town for my course. Yes, we still had it, even though we started a few hours late. The tutor won’t be coming back to NZ for a few more years and we didn’t want to miss out. There were no trains running for those coming from the north, but plenty of buses from the east for me.

Tuesday things all got a bit harder again though, due to storms and torrential rain. Although we all made it into the city for the course, most of the others were unable to get home due to major flooding and road closures. We’ve had some respite today with a fine, sunny day but tomorrow more storms are expected.

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I got home to find a landslide just along the footpath from our house. It had undermined a council path that leads to our house and two others. That’s our house – No 12. You can see that it’s extremely minor damage.

Photo by @sift666

Photo by @sift666

In other parts of the country, there have been disruptions to power and to the water supply.

At Foxton Beach, further north than us, this picture of the beach shows how big the effect was even that far away from the epicentre.

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But the areas worst affected are in the South Island, closer to the epicentre.

One of these is the tourist town of Kaikoura, which has been completely cut off from the rest of the country due to landslides blocking the state highway. In the photo below, you can see the railway line curving at the edge of the picture. But the road is way further back completely blocked by what looks like a large hill.

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They had only about 3 days worth of water and food, and Navy frigates are trying to get in with supplies and to evacuate tourists. But there isn’t a port at Kaikoura, the seabed has been lifted by at least a metre, and the large ships can’t get in. Australia has sent a frigate and the USA has sent a warship to help. People are being ferried out either by chopper or by small boats to the frigates.

One of our customers told us she has an aunt there and says that most of the properties are ok. But there has been some severe property damage to some houses and motels. The double whammy for Kaikoura is that tourism is their source of income. It could be months before the state highway is open again, and their main tourist season will be missed. There is even a possibility that it will never reopen.

There are other isolated communities in the South Island that have not been fully assessed yet.

Here’s a news site with a lot of photos. Mostly of Kaikoura, but some of Wellington and other areas.

And more photos here.

A fellow Wellington Steemian @trevor.george has been out in the thick of it as a member of the emergency response team. See his story here.

Thanks to Steemians for all your thoughts and prayers. We have been incredibly lucky, but many people are going to be badly affected. We can only be grateful that the damage and loss of life is not as severe as Christchurch in 2011.

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THOUGHTS ABOUT LIFE: My Intro ~ Are there kiwis in the house? ~ Benefits of joining a community choir ~ My grandmother’s legacy ~ Steemit in downtown Wellington ~ Overcoming my fears ~ Observations from a bus ~ The brandy snap maker ~ Wearable Arts Award Show ~ 2 months on Steemit and now curating health, nutrition and recipes ~ Positivity Challenge 3 – Acts of kindness ~ Positivity Challenge 4 with a twist ~ Positivity Challenge 4 – Emotional Freedom Technique Part 1 ~ EFT Part 2 – Getting started