Note aftershocks ranging from 5.6 to 4.5 have also been felt in the last few hours. Here is a list of quakes.
We wish our Kiwi friends well, and hope that the quake is not as bad as first reports indicate.
From MSNBC
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A 6.3-magnitude earthquake Tuesday rocked the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch, collapsing buildings, cracking streets and causing multiple fatalities and serious injuries.
The nation’s leader, Prime Minister John Key, said at least 65 had died as a result of the disaster and told reporters in the stricken city that the death toll was expected to rise further.
Live video footage showed streets strewn with bricks and shattered concrete. Sidewalks and roads were cracked and split, and hundreds of dazed, screaming and crying residents wandered as sirens blared throughout the city. Bodies were being pulled from rubble. Water mains burst, causing extensive flooding.
“There have been fatalities,” John Hamilton, the head of New Zealand’s civil defense, told reporters. “We can’t confirm the numbers yet, we’ll leave that to the police process to go through.”
New Zealand police said in a statement that there were reports of multiple deaths, including a report that two buses had been crushed by falling buildings. The police statement said there were other reports of fires burning.
…
The epicenter of the quake was located in the “worst possible location” for city residents, New Zealand’s GeoNet Center data manager Kevin Fenaughty told the New Zealand Herald.
From comments, link to a photogallery here
======================================================
Quake details:
| Magnitude | 6.3 |
|---|---|
| Date-Time |
|
| Location | 43.600°S, 172.710°E |
| Depth | 5 km (3.1 miles) |
| Region | SOUTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND |
| Distances | NEAR Christchurch, New Zealand
225 km (140 miles) SSE of Westport, New Zealand 305 km (190 miles) SSW of WELLINGTON, New Zealand 310 km (190 miles) NE of Dunedin, New Zealand |
| Location Uncertainty | horizontal +/- 12.2 km (7.6 miles); depth +/- 0.6 km (0.4 miles) |
| Parameters | Nph= 0, Dmin=0 km, Rmss=0.98 sec, Gp= 0,
M-type=”moment” magnitude from initial P wave (tsuboi method) (Mi/Mwp), Version=D |
| Source |
|
| Event ID | usb0001igm |
magnitude earthquake Tuesday rocked the
southern New Zealand city of Christchurch,
collapsing buildings, cracking streets and
causing multiple fatalities and serious injuries.
The nation’s leader, Prime Minister John Key,said at least 65 had died as a result of the
disaster and told reporters in the stricken city
that the death toll was expected to rise further.
Live video footage showed streets strewn withbricks and shattered concrete. Sidewalks and
roads were cracked and split, and hundreds of
dazed, screaming and crying residents
wandered as sirens blared throughout the city.
Bodies were being pulled from rubble. Water
mains burst, causing extensive flooding.
“There have been fatalities,” John Hamilton, thehead of New Zealand’s civil defense, told
reporters. “We can’t confirm the numbers yet,
we’ll leave that to the police process to go
through.”
New Zealand police said in a statement thatthere were reports of multiple deaths,
including a report that two buses had been
crushed by falling buildings. The police
statement said there were other reports of
fires burning.
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Taking bets on how long before this is attributed to man-made CO2. I’d guess 3 days to let the horror mature, then they’ll go for it….
The Ring of Fire and Thunder …
Watching the news from the safety of Australia. And having just come back from a holiday in Christchurch only a couple of months back makes it a bit more topical.
Looks like its far more severe than the previous earthquake of September 2010 – far shallower and more damage.
On the news all day here in Aus. Christchurch stood little chance with this one. September last year there was a 7.1 quake, focal depth ~15km. This one, albeit “smaller”, focal depth was only 5k. So there would have been very strong shaking and liquifaction.
The husband of a friend of mine is slap bang right in the middle of the city, he is ok however.
Having lived in Wellington, life in a fault zone is an interesting and challenging one when the shakes begin.
“Jimmy Mac says:
February 22, 2011 at 12:10 am”
Not yet, but I am sure it will come. Interestingly enough, I read an article that cliamed the recent solar flares/CME’s were the cause.
Here is a isoseismal map of the damage potential care of NZ’s GeoNet. Only 5 km depth is not good.
An awful event. Thank goodness our family is ok though my son was in Cathedral Square and his work building was badly damaged.
Reports are of lateral acceleration of nearly 1g, attributed to the epicentre being close to the surface.
Sad loss of life. Earthquakes are inevitable when they’re living on the edge.
I suspect that there will be calls for a review of building standards when the dust settles. There certainly ought to be.
Yet more evidence of global warming?
OK, let’s be semi serious. We’ve basically won this war, so I’m going to post this despite the possibility it gets taken up by the moronsphere of global warming.
If the world were warming, then, we’d expect the surface of the earth to warm. As everyone knows, warming causes expansion, but that expansion will not occur equally as different rocks expand at different rates. Also the surface will warm hundreds of years before the substrata. (The warming rate is hundreds if not thousands of years!)
The result is that changing temperature on the surface will create stresses in the earth that build up with greater surface temperature change and with longer periods of cooler/hotter climate.
To put it in perspective I did a back of the envelope calculation for a 100,000 year cooling/warming cycle, and the rate of crust movement was comparable with “normal” plate tectonics.
Recently I replaced some of the central heating pipes with plastic. Ever since then, whenever the heating starts we hear a “creeking” as the pipes begin to expand. The creeking is caused by punctuated expansion. Likewise if the world temperature were changing then you would expect to get similar “creeking”, which would be expressed over a much longer time period due to the much larger system i.e. as a series of earthquakes.
Just for fun, let’s examine this further. If the crust of the earth expands due to temperature increase, then that crust can’t just get bigger, part of the crust will be forced down under adjacent plates so that the rocks expand but the total size of the crust remains the same. As many of these rocks will be carbon rich, the result will be to liberate huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere (and create oil … but that’s another grand theory) … obviously CO2 causes more warming (wink) so, the rate of warming will increase resulting in further expansion and subduction of crust releasing more CO2.
But sooner or later the expansion will stop, the temperature will start to decline (possibly by external forcing such as the earth’s tilt) and then the planet crust will start to shrink. A shrinking crust will cause “gaps” in the crust through which the mantle will come resulting in the expansion of areas like the mid-Atlantic ridge, this will continually fill in the gaps as the crust shrinks until the earth goes back through another warming cycle.
The interesting bit
Strangely, the rate of movement over e.g. a series of iceages is comparable with normal plate movement. And, it is just possible that the main reason for plate movement is due to a cycle of expansion/contraction of plate due to cyclic temperature changes. Moreover, it is possible that if CO2 were a cooling gas (which it is in part!!), then the release of CO2 as the crust expands could result in cooling which then drives the cycle into shrinking, allows the reduction in CO2, which then leads to warming, until you have a regular CO2 climate cycle of about 100,000 years, causing the bulk of plate movement.
Unfortunately, under such a model, you would expect to see periods of subduction/volcanic release of CO2 interspersed with periods of little volcanic activity and ridge building at expansion zones. And whilst, I’ve not done any research, there’s nothing to suggest it is happening.
Of course, it could all be synchronised to other changes, like changes to the earth’s tilt could trigger a change of phase from warming to cooling.
… but that doesn’t make it an interesting theory!
… better still if the warmist take this up and start saying: “another volcano … yet further proof of global warming!”
It’s pretty bad. Here are some photo’s – look at the cathedral in the town square (#40).
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/image.cfm?c_id=1&gal_objectid=10707996&gallery_id=116912#7380004
[:( ]
Living in the North Island, we are removed from the immediate tragedy, but looking at the news, and knowing the Christchurch area, there will sadly be many more added to the death toll over the next few days.
Collapsed buildings have simply concertinaed to ground level – hundreds may be inside.
Friends down there reported safe thankfully
Andy
NZ TV3 reporting that the final death toll may be 200-400.
Grim news to wake up to this morning, and for once a chance to feel grateful for living in the UK, about as far away as possible. NZ, you’re in all our thoughts.
Shall be interested to see how long it takes before the echo chamber blames it on “manmade global warming”. It looks to me a lot more like an effect of the weekend’s full moon coupled with the moon’s being very near perigee – strictly gravitational stuff. If lunar cycles are at all responsible here, just wait for new moon on Mar 19th – when there will be an even stronger influence, as perigee proper is roughly bang on the next new moon.
This web site shows all the 4800+ quakes that christchurch has experienced since the big one, and still they continue..
http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/
Many Australians have either had holidays or worked in New Zealand, and to our very good friends, its times like this, we put aside our sports rivalry and want to pitch in and help in any way we can, its an ANZAC thing, where we have supported each other in war and peace, in troubles and joys as good mates.
There are Australian volunteers and professionals heading across to help and our thoughts are with you all. There is a strong bond of affection between our two countries.
My home town – though I have almost no family (no immediate family) and have lost contact with all school friends. I went away to university. We grew up with little sense of an earthquake risk. The main fault lines run down the spine of the island, and onto the North Island. Wellington (the capital) is a known high earthquake risk.
I understand it was only with the earthquake late last year that it was realised that the city was on a fault. I doubt that building standards would have been as high as in Wellington, so the lack of preparedness will have exacerbated the impact. As Aaron Wildavsky once said, the secret of safety lies in danger.
The city sits in the shadow of an old volcanic area (Banks Peninsula) and on an alluvial plain. There has apparently been much liquefaction – the same kind of problem which makes Mexico City very prone to earthquake risk.
Very sad to see.
Yep……. it’s pretty bad……. the footage of the buildings coming down was eerily similar to 9/11 footage.
Hope hope for the best and my thoughts are with my friends, workmates and fellow kiwis.
I only came back from working there yesterday. I was staying on the 13th floor of an apartment building 1 block from the square, so I count myself lucky.
It’s a pretty black day for our country and I will keep thinking positive thoughts, but realistically, 65 dead is going to be the tip of the iceberg 🙁
I’m in Auckland, NZ. Far enough away for emotional insulation, but near enough to feel their pain in Christchurch. It’s bad.
One story worth making a note of for when the next study mentions glacial retreat in NZ: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10708071
Someone will bring that up, guaranteed.
This is a big hit for NZ. Given the relative sizes of the populations, it’s easily the equivalent of the 9/11 attack for the US. And yet in the UK it’s not on the BBC front pages at all.
I finally found a mention of it in the BBC Asia/Pacific pages – just a photo-montage with no comment.
I would like to assure our southern cousins that, though the UK state-run media seem to be ignoring your plight, our thoughts are with you and your loved ones, many of whom are our relatives and friends as well…
Watched on TV, the aftermath of the quake, real time from Melbourne, Australia. Witnessed a woman being rescued from the top storey of a collapsed highrise as her workmates in the street below shouted encoragement and advice. It was quite inspiring to see the way people in the street helped others who were injured or distressed. Australians, of course, will be quick to give support to our friends in New Zealand.
Does anyone know the MMS or Mercalli intensity scale readings? Richter scale can be misleading because local conditions can differ considerably especially in shallow earthquakes. Some witnesses have talked of ground liquefaction. Lateral shaking was ~1g and people were thrown off their feet.
It sounds like an VIII. Destructive on the Mercalli scale (which tries to capture local conditions qualitatively). VIII means Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable in ordinary substantial buildings with partial collapse. Damage great in poorly built structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture moved.. That equates to 7.0 or more on the Richter scale.
Sad prediction – both the Richter scale reading and the death toll will continue to rise.
That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary nibble!
Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter’s sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold.
But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!
Incredibly grim news. With all the data collected worldwide, a model, any model, which could forecast some warning about earthquakes would be of far more use to humanity than the climate modelling nonsense we hear. There was a 6.4 2011/02/21 10:57:53 south of Fiji Islands, a 5.1 2011/02/21 12:26:34 Solomon Islands, before these earthquakes in Christchurch. There are also earthquakes in the Loyalty Islands. Is there a pattern?
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.html
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/bigmap/index.phtml
As a Kiwi currently living in London I feel helpless due to my inability to do anything practical to help at this distance. Still hopefully waiting on news from relatives and friends who work in the Christchurch CBD.