crazyscot

It sounds like a set of scores from an Olympic event.

Sadly, those are the magnitudes of the earthquakes we have had this afternoon.


There I was, the last day at work before Xmas, having a relatively quiet day as a lot of people had taken the day off. It was coming up 2pm, I was just at the coffee machine making myself some tea... and the place started shaking. SHAKING. SHAKING.

Shit, I thought, as the corridor continued to roll underneath me and I leant against a wall for support. The power stayed on, and the quake subsided gradually. That was the biggest quake I've ever felt. I couldn't tell you how long it lasted; time had gone a bit funny for me as well as the ground. As if on autopilot I put milk into my tea and went back to my desk. There was no panic or alarum, but people were filing outside and a number of ceiling tiles had been shaken half-free. I put down my tea, picked up my things and followed the small crowd. There was no building warden to hand, but somebody had had the gumption to pick up the sign-in lists and we all pronounced ourselves present and correct. I spent a few minutes on the phone to rustica, not knowing what was going to happen next. Rumours were starting to fly about liquefaction and power cuts in the eastern suburbs. A warden from the next building along came along and checked everybody was accounted for, then suggested we all went home. So I did.

The roads were busy, but flowing; we supposed that those companies that were still open had simply shut up shop early. Eventually we learned from Geonet that it was a 5.8, to the east of Chch, maybe 15km offshore. Jangled, we tried to relax. There were aftershocks. We checked the house and our things; no damage, though the contents of my desk had been slightly rearranged.

And then about 3:15pm we had another big one. I was at my desk at home; threw myself under it. That was a bit of a scunner; shorter-lived but more violent than the 2pm quake. "Bugger," I thought, "so that 5.8 was just a foreshock?" Some of the kit on my desk had been thrown onto the floor. rustica had been in the kitchen, but was unharmed; just a bit shaken by nontrivial amounts of water being thrown from the sink over the floor and into the cupboards. Back to square one; we checked the house again, gingerly opened all the cupboards, mopped the kitchen floor . . .

It took a while for Geonet to interpret their data and put a number on this quake, and this number is 6.0. The epicentre was right under the coastal suburb of South New Brighton. Like all of Canterbury's quakes over the past 15 months or so, it was very shallow. There has been fresh liquefaction in the eastern suburbs, but not apparently on the scale of the previous big ones.

And so our adopted home town is gradually dusting itself down again. The malls are closed, but expect to reopen tomorrow; the airport has already reopened, along with a few shops. Tomorrow we will brave the traffic and go and check out our new house. Pictures from the Herald.

I just realised that my tea is still on my desk at work. Or, at least, it was when I last saw it; the 6.0 might well have deposited it into my keyboard. And if not, by the time I go back in the New Year it'll have evolved to the point where it'll have made a bid for freedom!