Earthquake

[cfheinz]

Hope you folks are ok.

[stan_qaz]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010 ... 002489.htm

Doesn't sound really bad but it may have made a mess out of the offices and folks homes.

[Sidewinder]

7.2 magnitude near Christchurch, NZ home to RD and FT.

[Daledoc1]

Ditto here: hope everyone in NZ is OK.

daledoc1

[stan_qaz]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10671049

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/4 ... ristchurch

[Sidewinder]

RD just advised that he, GF and dog are all OK! Dog a little spooked.

[rusticdog]

Thanks

And yeap, all doing fine here, we've obviously been lucky, no damage I can see at all to house, got water and power etc...
One of the support guys lives out of town, closer to the epicentre and everything's all good there for him. I've not heard from all the staff, but many areas of the city have no power for the rest of the day.


The central city is shut down, I couldn't speculate what possible damage at the office.....but I expect that won't make any disruption for us as we all are setup to work from home. A few other pics here http://www.crashbang.co.nz/quake040910/

[cfheinz]

Glad you folks came through it ok. Hope the office did as well.

[mcullet]

Hi RD and all KIWI's,

WHEW! Glad to hear you are all OK ... as ok as can be expected under the circumstances. Scary stuff - wish there was more I could do than say I'm thinking of you and hope you all remain safe. But don't know how or what ...

Stay safe folks

[rusticdog]

Yeap we're all good. Thanks for all the well wishes
No staff I've heard from have even spoken about major damage to their houses, it's remarkable what difference a few kilometres in distance makes.

A good portion of the central city is closed until Wednesday, while cleanup and building investigations take place, there's no significant damage to speak of to the Firetrust office, so we can optionally come back in Monday which is just outside the cordon, although too we can all work from home and there's no coffee machine at work so I'm staying put. Apparently this earthquake is about 10x smaller than 'the big one' we expect to hit the main Alpine fault, sometime within the next 40 years. Gosh, looking forward to that one

From all I've heard folk are very impressed with how Civil Defence, Police, Fire Service etc...are handling the situation. Full credit to our building codes which have been altered suitably for events like this, and coupled with the timing of being 4:30am it's stunning that no-one was killed. Had this been at 4:30pm there's no doubt we'd be dealing with a lot more injuries and deaths. There are many who have had to evacuate their homes, but various shelters have been setup around the city. I believe around 90% of the region has power back, with around 20% still without water.

Financially we've got the Earthquake Commission which basically takes a very small portion of every home/contents insurance policy and puts into the Govt controlled 'nest egg', they will be handling most of the residential claims, while private insurers will handle commercial and the extra damage for folks whose homes have much more considerable damage.

We do though now have a storm coming up from the south, so gale force winds and rain forecast...that might cause a few real issues as we've had some movement in the water table, small rivers going places where small rivers weren't there before ...


Edit : In terms of aftershocks we must be at close to 50, though all small. There's predictions that we should expect an aftershock hitting around the 6.0 mark, so by comparison nothing, but perhaps enough to bring some more damage to those buildings already suffering structural damage.

The dog is still pretty spooked, he's not reacting to any of the aftershocks apart from one early today when he decided he'd be sleeping on the bed with us. But he hates being left alone right now, expected really considering he's about as soft as a dog can get

[rusticdog]

We had pizza delivered last night too

And apparently bottle stores (for liquor) are doing a good trade, guess a few strung nerves

[rusticdog]

Here's a map showing all the quakes in the last 2 days, courtesy of http://magma.geonet.org.nz/resources/quakesearch/

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[Gniblett]

Glad you guys are OK ... the pictures on the TV news here showed a lot of damage to property with homes collapsed. Phew ... the power of Nature indeed and must have been frightening.

[rusticdog]

Unfortunately the accountant has had his home damaged to an unliveable state, he's staying with family.


I just hit the grocery store for the regular fortnightly shop, they had pretty much everything we usually get.....a few things missing or I had to buy other brands, other than that there was no bread.

Still had the important stuff though, Ice Cream....Blackcurrent Concentrate

[rusticdog]

Had a few decent sized aftershocks in the last hour or so, a 5.2 and 5.4. Not enough to run around screaming like a 12 year old girl, but enough to make you stop thinking about what you're doing and consider that dash for the doorway.

Here's updated map now with an extra day of aftershocks....

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