Wellington quake

Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, August 16th, 2013 - 57 comments
Categories: disaster - Tags: , ,

Another quake near Seddon that shook Wellington hard. Various reports of strength, probably 6.2 at 8km. Hope all are well…

Multiple aftershocks – check out http://wellingtonquakelive.co.nz/ and #eqnz.

57 comments on “Wellington quake ”

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  1. tracey 1
    16 August 2013 at 2:51 pm

    My partner felt it on 5th floor of james and wells building in auckland!

  2. Brett Dale 2
    16 August 2013 at 2:51 pm

    Thats sucked, felt big here.

  3. Enough is Enough 3
    16 August 2013 at 2:52 pm

    That’s the first quake I have ever felt in Hamilton. Scared the life out of us who aren’t used to quakes.

    Hope everyone is safe where it really rocked down Welly way.

    • Matthew Whitehead 3.1
      16 August 2013 at 4:24 pm

      We’re fine down here. There were a lot of people heading home early and some were a bit rattled, but there’s been no indications of any serious damage or injury yet, and hopefully it stays that way. šŸ™‚

  4. tracey 4
    16 August 2013 at 2:54 pm

    Am booked to fly to welly tonight… major second thoughts.

    is a news crew ever going to do a spell in seddon… those folks must be freaked as all get out

    • miravox 4.1
      16 August 2013 at 3:24 pm

      “Major second thoughts”

      I know the feeling. I was on the plane on the way here when the first July quake hit – got here in time for the bigger one. You might want to check if the airport is even open – it was closed last time for quake inspections.

      • bad12 4.1.1
        16 August 2013 at 3:41 pm

        Wellington airport is open, seemed to be planes hardly stopped between shakes, they just run a car up and down the runway a couple of times to check for cracking,

        Mind you it’s gone a bit quiet down there at the moment,

        All the Wellington trains have been stopped, so far there’s about 500 people stuck at the railway station…

        • alwyn 4.1.1.1
          16 August 2013 at 3:59 pm

          Is that really all they do to check the runway?
          It reminds me of a time, many years ago, when we visited on of the Flying Doctor bases while we were touring round Australia.
          The landing strips on the outback stations are simply bulldozed patchs of ground, There is no finishing at all and they aren’t always maintained to keep them level.
          Apparently the pilot going to one makes a low pass to look at the strip to see how good it is. If he doesn’t like the look of it he can then require the people on the ground to drive their car down the strip at full speed while he watches from the air. If it bucks to much, or if they won’t do the run in the car, he will refuse to land.
          I thought we were having our legs pulled but I later met someone who had lived in the outback and we assured it was true.
          While typing this we have just had another after-shock.

          • Matthew Whitehead 4.1.1.1.1
            16 August 2013 at 4:27 pm

            What else would they do?

            They can’t predict if there’ll be another earthquake and they pre-flight check every plane already. šŸ™‚

          • bad12 4.1.1.1.2
            16 August 2013 at 4:42 pm

            LOLZ, other than have Infratils airport manager crawl up and down the acres of runway with a magnifying glass checking for unusual occurrences i cannot imagine there would be much more that they could do,

            That’s not a bad idea now that i think of it, and have the f**king peasant do the above while stark naked would seem to be a fitting codicil…

          • Murray Olsen 4.1.1.1.3
            16 August 2013 at 7:32 pm

            I know where my brother lives in southern NSW they do a low pass, but it’s to check for kangaroos. If they see any, someone goes out in a 4wd and chases them off. I’ve never heard about checking the bumps.

      • Martin 4.1.2
        16 August 2013 at 7:11 pm

        no it’s open. but quiet

  5. risildowgtn 5
    16 August 2013 at 3:00 pm

    Levin shook…… was in car- shook like jelly…….

  6. alwyn 6
    16 August 2013 at 3:22 pm

    As a Wellingtonian what can I say but
    “Yawn. What on earth are you nervous people getting so excited about. We barely felt it”.
    Alternatively I could tell the truth and say that it was a beaut. I was into the doorway to get some protection from the frame.

    • bad12 6.1
      16 August 2013 at 3:47 pm

      Lolz, it is quite interesting tho don’t you think, theres a series of shakes that have happened, Levin, Taihape, Ohakune, wonder if the boffins still think that such cannot be inter-connected…

      • Colonial Viper 6.1.1
        16 August 2013 at 4:38 pm

        Fracking can never set off distant earthquakes, its iiiimmmmppppoooossssiible!

    • Ennui 6.2
      16 August 2013 at 4:15 pm

      Jeez Alwyn, it scared the bejasus out of me, got under the table. Looked around and saw everybody else doing the same.

  7. bad12 7
    16 August 2013 at 3:53 pm

    Another small jolt just then, not big, east to west motion…

    Edit lolz, the Reserve Bank has been evacuated because of a gas leak…

  8. NickS 8
    16 August 2013 at 4:06 pm

    Didn’t even feel it down here in CHCH šŸ˜› (was out getting moar happy-pills)

    From the sounds of it though this one had quite a large side-to-side movement/horizontal acceleration component to it which would make it feel quite significant, but the reports coming in indicate it didn’t have as much energy as the ones here in Christchurch did. So Seddon etc got off lightly.

    News indicates it was a slip-strike, and I’ll bet it had some vertical movement as well.

    http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/ – should have something up on the mechanism in a couple days at most.

  9. Rhinocrates 9
    16 August 2013 at 4:21 pm

    My thoughts echoed those of the bowl of petunias in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

  10. AsleepWhileWalking 10
    16 August 2013 at 4:27 pm

    It wasn’t the *BIG* one. Until it is let’s hope more people start prepping.

    • Greywarbler 10.1
      16 August 2013 at 4:35 pm

      AWW
      I always thought your pseudonym an odd but interesting one. Then I heard recently that a woman drove a considerable distance while she was actually asleep. And had taken some sleeping pills or tranquilisers even though she knows she has this problem. It is a known condition that some people can do it. But I can’t imagine how. Sleep walking – sleep driving a big vehicle round corners WTF.

      • QoT 10.1.1
        16 August 2013 at 10:09 pm

        How about sleep-driving to your in-laws’ house across town and murdering one of them? aka The Scariest Thing Ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_sleepwalking#Parks_case

      • Colonial Viper 10.1.2
        16 August 2013 at 10:19 pm

        It is a known condition that some people can do it. But I canā€™t imagine how. Sleep walking ā€“ sleep driving a big vehicle round corners WTF.

        Its sorta equivalent to driving a familiar route back home after a hard day at work, walking in the front door, then realising that you can barely remember anything specific about the evening’s journey home. Full autopilot.

  11. bad12 11
    16 August 2013 at 4:44 pm

    Gee is that it??? anyone know who the owner of this ride is, i want my money back…

  12. infused 12
    16 August 2013 at 6:27 pm

    We all left work. Was fucking huge.

  13. BM 13
    16 August 2013 at 7:00 pm

    Have to say when I felt it it Hamilton and it clicked that I was experiencing an earth quake,
    I really thought Wellington was gone.

    Does make you wonder about the craziness of having your civil defense HQ, your Parliament, your national museum in a place like Wellington.

    We all know there’s going to be a big one and Wellington’s going to be FUBARED, seems crazy to have such vital organizations sited in a place that could be wiped off the map at any moment.

    • RedLogix 13.1
      16 August 2013 at 7:39 pm

      Wgtn is probably better prepared than any other city in the country … and as ChCh demonstrated the whole of New Zealand is one big geo-technical hazard of one sort or another.

      • BM 13.1.1
        16 August 2013 at 8:08 pm

        I propose moving everything to Hamilton, you know it makes sense.

        • Macro 13.1.1.1
          16 August 2013 at 8:55 pm

          From our Regional Council BM
          http://www.waikatoregion.govt.nz/Services/Regional-services/Regional-hazards-and-emergency-management/Earthquakes/
          Waikato earthquakes
          New Zealand straddles the boundary between two tectonic plates – the Pacific Plate and the Australian Plate. These plates are moving towards each other by about 50 mm per year. This movement can be felt as tremors in the Waikato region.

          There are three large active faults considered ‘risky’ in the Waikato region:

          The Kerepehi Fault – extending along the Thames Estuary and the Hauraki Plains.
          The Rangipo Fault – on the eastern side of Mount Ruapehu.
          The Wairoa North Fault – running along the Bombay Hills north-east of Mercer.
          There have been long gaps between earthquakes in the Waikato region. The area between Taupo and Rotorua is the most vulnerable part of our region for earthquakes. It contains many active fault lines running in a north-east direction.

          Check out our map of earthquake zones in the Waikato region.

    • Macro 13.2
      16 August 2013 at 7:39 pm

      The Civil Defence HQ is in the basement of the Beehive one of the most earthquake resistant buildings in the country.

      see here
      http://www.propertyrisk.com/refcentr/base.htm

  14. Martin 14
    16 August 2013 at 7:09 pm

    Fracking here? don’t even think about doing it! :6

  15. RedLogix 15
    16 August 2013 at 7:33 pm

    Oh dear … noticeable but not dangerous really. Nothing at all like ChCh or even Edgecumbe. Probably quite exciting around Seddon. I for one am thoroughly sick of a lazy media only quoting Richter magnitudes which are quite meaningless really; all that really matter from a human perspective are the peak ground accelerations.

    Also very interesting is the very wide spread of the aftershocks .. from Collingwood, Tuarangi, Hawea, Levin. I can’t help but wonder if this is a good or a bad thing..

    • infused 15.1
      16 August 2013 at 9:12 pm

      Shits obviously moving. These quakes were big. Not sure if you live in Wellington or not.

      • geoff 15.1.1
        16 August 2013 at 9:45 pm

        Just wait till they’re under your fucking house boyo, then you’ll really know all about it.

      • RedLogix 15.1.2
        17 August 2013 at 9:11 am

        Yesterday I was working in one of the southern Wgtn suburbs infused. I looked about, decided I was in a safe enough place and kept on typing.

        I was also in the 1987 Edgecumbe quake. That was much, much worse. That one threw me right off my feet twice. And I mean thrown; nothing I could do to anticipate or stop it. It was 10 times worse than what happened in Wgtn yesterday…..yet that quake goes down in the records as only a 6.3.

        While the seismologists do an excellent job of rapidly assessing quakes remotely using the Richter scale (which essentially measures the total energy released) … the actual impact on people and buildings is entirely related to the local peak ground accelerations, which an entirely different thing. Obviously epicentre depth and distance are the two main factors involved.

        But to complicate matters the magnitude of these accelerations vary quite a bit depending on the local subsoil conditions you happen to be in, and the way in which the P and S waves are reflected, diffracted and sometimes focused off differing densities of rock layers. That’s why you may have felt a much larger movement than I did … even though were in the same city.

    • Greywarbler 15.2
      17 August 2013 at 11:53 am

      Peak ground acceleration. Is that shown up in the page from geonet which comes if you press Latest?

  16. Sable 16
    16 August 2013 at 8:28 pm

    All good in sunny Seatoun. Just a bit of a tremor here but not so good down in the Wellington CBD.

    • Rhinocrates 16.1
      16 August 2013 at 8:48 pm

      Noticed the difference – down in Te Aro, quite a lot of noise and movement, yet experiencing similar force at the west end of Aro Valley, just a couple of toppled paperweights. The Wellington flat and CBD and Hutt Valley are essentially bowls of jelly.

  17. Rhinocrates 17
    16 August 2013 at 8:41 pm

    …annnnd just felt another one.

    The irony was, during the major one this afternoon, I was tutoring some architecture students on design for earthquakes.

    I would have quipped, “well, what did you think of our demonstration?” but I’d already used that one last time.

  18. Lloyd 18
    16 August 2013 at 10:04 pm

    We never had earthquakes like these under Helen.

    • Colonial Viper 18.1
      17 August 2013 at 9:47 am

      True! The Just and Mighty Guardians of the Earth hate that lying greaseball John Key!

  19. vto 19
    17 August 2013 at 2:47 am

    There a lot of the population sleeping anxious

  20. lenore 20
    17 August 2013 at 9:37 am

    My experience yesterday as one of the huge numbers of people who just wanted to get out of the city was also implementing our family plan. It was a really useful exercise for my family as we have a plan which has stages and the first stage includes our 14 year old getting her 12 year old sister and going directly to her nana’s nearby to the school. However, the 12 year old was offered a lift home by someone’s mother and texted us and then all texts to her failed. The 14 year old went over the school , hunted her down as she was heading off home with this mother, found her before then and they followed the plan. There were a lot of other very worried older siblings also trying to find their younger siblings as school had been let out and the kids were all over the place. The school’s all have our emergency contacts and it was a bit frustrating that they didn’t keep the kids there until the right people got them or the kids could follow their emergency plan. We had a family meeting and our youngest had been lectured all the way home by her sister anyway so that is well ingrained now but if this had been really serious, I am stuck in town, can’t get hold of them then I want to know the school’s also know and follow what we request. Some feedback to them but a bit of a wakeup call for all of us

  21. Rosie 21
    17 August 2013 at 12:42 pm

    Doubling up on my commenting here. Copied from the Weekend Social:

    “I heard on the RNZ news before that we have a 38% chance of having another magnitude 6+ within the next 7 days. Lets hope weā€™re on the side of the 62% šŸ™‚

    I feel for the folks in Seddon whoā€™ve had serious damage. I hope everyone is ok in the rest of top of the south and here in Wellington.The structural engineers are going to be busy all weekend in town.

    Thoughts going out to those of you who are affected by quakes. I hope your day today is peaceful and that you managed to get a good sleep last night. Kia Kaha”.

    Just to add, take it easy and enjoy being in the company of those you love. We’re so lucky despite the stress of it.

    • Poission 21.1
      17 August 2013 at 1:35 pm

      the structural engineers are going to be busy all weekend in town.

      In the last year they have cleared 5% of the Wgtn non ductile column buildings( CTV type) and have performed little assessment of known high risk (yellow stickered buildings) since the first quake.

      Williamson release 30 minutes prior to the latest shock, is telling.

      http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1308/S00274/non-ductile-column-buildings-review-update.htm

      • Rosie 21.1.1
        17 August 2013 at 3:14 pm

        Poission, I’m just going by the awareness of those I know personally that are doing this work this weekend, and who were flat out immediately after the July quake. Note this is immediate post quake assessment that I’m talking about.

  22. the pigman 22
    18 August 2013 at 4:25 pm

    I for one am sick of hearing commentators say stuff like “The earthquake had the force of 100 Hiroshima bombs” and “It felt like the March Christchurch earthquake”. NZers seem to think they’re celebrities because they have a sister-in-law who “felt it in whangarei” and need to tell the world that through social networking.

    Am I the only one who finds the 100 hiroshima atomic bombs grossly offensive and (perhaps worse) completely inaccurate?

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