Neither shaken nor stirred. Again.

Every morning I make my coffee and then pick up my iPad to check my emails, social media, and any news alerts for things that happened overnight, something I’ve done that for a very long time. This morning I saw an alert for a news story: “Why phones woke thousands before 5.9 magnitude earthquake”. My first thought was, “what earthquake?” It happened at 4:51am, while I was asleep, and was centred near the King Country town of Taumarunui, some 170km (around 106 US miles) south of Kirikiriroa-Hamilton. I never felt a thing, and I also didn’t get any alert, of course, since I’m an iPhone user.

Actually, not only have I never been awakened by an earthquake (so far…), and I’ve only ever felt two earthquakes (so far…). The first was on July 19, 2004, when we were living in Paeroa, and the second (and stronger) one was on February 21, 2007 when we were living on Auckland’s North Shore, something and I mentioned both in a post about the 2007 earthquake (it’s quite handy that I’ve been blogging for nearly 20 years).

Having said all that, there have been times when I’ve felt a gentle rumble and wondered if it was a heavy truck nearby, or maybe Rūaumoko was stomping about underground. More often than not, it would’ve been a truck—or not (very mild ones, mostly too mild for humans to feel, happen all the time in New Zealand).

Earth Sciences NZ seismologist Sam Taylor-Offord told 1News that aftershocks will continue for months, and he also explained something I’d wondered about: Why folks on the east and west sides of the North Island may not feel earthquakes on the opposite side as strongly, or even at all. According to the linked article, he said:

"There's kind of this shadow between running right down the middle of the Taupō volcanic zone, where the Earth is sort of softer, hotter, and seismic waves get worn down really quickly."

The thing that started my journey into finding out more about this morning’s earthquake was the phone alerts some people got, and I think the tech behind is interesting (of course…). It’s likely to improve and become more accurate over time, and, if it does, it’ll inevitably come to iPhones, too. This tech won’t mean people will necessarily feel the earthquakes they’re alerted to, but it could give folks a brief warning before a potentially bigger one reaches them wherever they are. Maybe?

Once I got to social media late this morning, I read the stories of people who felt the earthquake. While it’s not even remotely unusual for others to have felt an earthquake I didn’t, this time my first thought was actually about how I couldn’t even imagine being awake at 4:51am on a Saturday morning. That’s definitely about me.

This morning, and not for the first time, the morning news alerts on my iPad told me about something that happened while I was asleep, and so, I was, also as usual, oblivious to it all. But the Internet brought me up to speed on the story, and this blog helped me precisely remember specific details about some of my own history with earthquakes. To me, this is a good example of technology making my life better. Others may not feel that, of course. C’est la vie.