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.

In other news today

There was some actual news here today: There was a 5.1 earthquake at 5.39am this morning near Te Aroha, a town roughly an hour’s drive, from Hamilton. I was sound asleep at the time, and it clearly wasn’t strong enough here to wake me up. However, other folks in Hamilton, as well as people in Auckland, said they felt it, and some in Hamilton, at least, were saying that they also felt a much weaker aftershock a little after 11am. I was awake at that time, but didn’t feel that, either.

Hamilton, Leo, and I were never in any danger—this time. The riftz zone that today’s earthquake was in has the potential for causing significant shaking in Hamilton and Auckland. Whether it ever does or not is another matter entirely, and, of course, is entirely unpredictable.

This sort of thing is a good reminder for us all to check our emergency supplies, and I know mine are lacking. While I always have several days of food on hand, I don’t have excess water anymore. Nearly five years ago, I wrote about making emergency preparations after a major storm we’d just experienced. That effort included stockpiling water. Not even a year and a half later, Nigel died, and four months after that, I was moving to Hamilton.

The movers I hired to pack up the house for the move packed all the bottles of water I’d set aside (I’d frankly forgotten about them), something I found out when I started unpacking in Hamilton. The water had been stored for more than 20 months when I found the bottles, so I ended up watering plants with them and putting the emptied milk bottles in the recycling—all except one. The last 3-litre bottle of water went into the bottom of a tall outdoor plant holder I had on my patio so the wind wouldn’t blow it over (it’s pretty lightweight).

In addition to food preparations, I also have to secure my tall furniture (mostly book shelves) to the wall so they won’t fall over if there’s every a big earthquake. I’d talked with Nigel about doing that with the shelved in my office at the last house, but never go around to it. Those same shelves are in my office in this house, too—and still not secured. I was thinking about that job when I checked Facebook and saw a “Memory” about assembling the second set of shelves in my lounge, something I talked about here on the blog a couple days later.

Today, then, was interesting. First, an earthquake happened, not that I knew anything about it at the time. That, then reminded me that I need to beef up my emergency supplies, and finally secure my tall furniture. Put another way, nature added another project set to my list—because, obviously I don’t have enough projects yet. Still, this emergency preparedness project might be a bit more important than most of them—though I’d really rather not have my work tested once it’s completed…

Explaining the Pacific’s Ring of Fire

The video above was posted as part of Vox’s Atlas series a few days ago. It’s informative, though mainly for people who don’t know about this already, and it also talks about some of the unmet challenges. It’s a good start.

Vox described the video this way:

The Ring of Fire is a band of volcanoes and frequent earthquakes that runs from New Zealand, up through Eastern Asia, across the Bering Strait and all the way down to the Southern tip of Chile. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis appear around the boundaries of the several, fast moving, tectonic plates that make up the region. When the plates collide, they create areas of volatility. The Ring of Fire sees more natural disasters than anywhere else on Earth, but what makes it particularly dangerous is that few countries are prepared.

I wouldn’t disagree with anything thing they said, except that New Zealand should get more credit for its preparedness. For example, our building codes are strong, and buildings in Wellington and Auckland needing earthquake strengthening have been identified and prioritised. Mostly they’re either heritage buildings, built before there were earthquake building codes, or ones built according to old standards that have since been toughened.

The point here is that dangers have been identified and work prioritised within realistic parameters: Obviously we’d like the buildings toughened NOW, but it has to be paid for somehow, and the trick is to manage the risk. I think New Zealand has it about right, but if time runs out everyone will think it was far too slow. That’s a different sort of risk.

The other side is preparedness: Making sure people are ready for disaster, and for that the Government has been advertising heavily (some of them shared on this blog) and talking about getting ready. Even so, we all know that people will put it off. So, in the past couple years, the emphasis has shifted to preparing for other natural disasters, like floods, cyclones, and other severe storms, because we experience those much more frequently. Preparations for storms are pretty much the same as preparation for earthquakes and volcanoes, so preparing for one will help prepare for other potential disasters.

New Zealand also has a devloping national alert system, which I wrote about in November last year. They also ran ads promoting the system. However, we got no warning at all of the big storm that hit this past April, so there’s still work to do.

The main missing piece in New Zealand, in my opinion, is community organisation: Helping communities to organise themselves to be able to get through a natural disaster until normal services resume, or help arrives. I’ve seen some tentative steps in that direction, but we could be doing so much more more. After all, in the aftermath of that storm last April, parts of Auckland had no power for several days. That’s enough to make civilisation to start breaking down.

Vox’s video makes clear that the natural disasters along the Pacific Ring of Fire are largely unpredictable. And, it makes clear that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can do to prepare for disaster. New Zealand is better prepared than, say, California, but we have a long way to go, too.

We must do better.

Related: All my posts labelled "Get Thru" are relevant to this topic.

More earthquake trouble

A big earthquake struck New Zealand a little after midnight this past Monday morning, November 14. We were asleep at the time and never felt a thing. But, then, we’re a LONG way from the epicentre, among other things.

The image above is of my status update on Facebook that morning. I woke up before 5am and couldn’t get to sleep, so I was up by about 5:30. When I checked Facebook, there were worried messages from friends who wanted to make sure we were safe. So, after writing a response (and copying and pasting it on all the messages to save time), I posted the more general update.

I also realised that this wasn’t clear enough for many people, so I made a screenshot of a map to illustrate the distance, and around 20 minutes later I posted it to Facebook, along with a narrative:

“This map may help some of you visualise the situation. "A" on the map is the epicentre of the 7.5 quake about 6 1/2 hours ago, and it's also the general area where all the others have happened. "B" on the map is Auckland, of course. There's around 680km between us (about 422 miles).

Auckland is on a different tectonic plate (and island, of course…), and because of that and the geology of Auckland, we generally don't feel South Island quakes, or even Wellington ones. Wellington is affected by many of the same geological features that affect the top of the South Island, and is part of the same fault system. Nearby parts of the North Island—even parts on the same plate as Auckland—often feel the quakes, too, because they're closer to the epicentre and the fault system than we are.

We have our own set of risks in Auckland, but the current swarm of earthquakes (many jolts have been very strong) are not among them.

Hope that helps calm some concerns about us in Auckland. So far, no fatalities in the quakes, which is the best news of all.”

Since I posted that, two people were confirmed dead, and today the magnitude was revised to 7.8. That doesn’t really matter, though: We already knew that the extent of the devastation is huge.

State Highway One, the main highway from the far north to the far south of the country, has been blocked and even destroyed in some parts of the area, maybe permanently. An 8-storey building in Christchurch has been condemned due to quake damage there, and many more are still waiting for a thorough assessment.

Meanwhile Kaikoura, which is world-famous for whale watching, faces the prospect of being cut off as the tourism season on which it depends is getting into high gear. If the tourists can’t come, how will businesses survive?

Meanwhile, several of the foreign ships visiting New Zealand for the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Royal New Zealand Navy (including the USS Sampson, which I wrote about last month), are now helping with rescue and relief efforts, since the only way in at the moment is by sea or air.

And, of course, the Kaikoura Cows were rescued.

All of that is stuff we all know here because it is, of course, big news in New Zealand, as it should be. Most people overseas won’t know about all this, and they don’t even necessarily know much at the time of an earthquake.

Every time there’s an earthquake in New Zealand, I get worried questions on social media, and I always have to provide geography and geology lessons to help people understand what happened, how we’re okay and safe, and why we’re not at risk from South Island earthquakes. It goes—quite literally—with the territory.

It’s unreasonable to expect people to be intimately familiar with other countries, even when they know someone who lives in that country. However, it’s also really nice that people on the other side of the world will be concerned when they hear something bad has happened here, and they take the time to reach out and ask. It kind of restores one’s faith in the goodness of others.

It’s been a very trying week, one I’ve felt because of both my nationalities. But the tragedy in New Zealand this week again brought them together.

Can we have something happier for us all next week, please?

Related: Back in 2013 I talked about the specific risks we face in Auckland.

Timely reminder

At 4:37am this morning, there was a 7.1 earthquake off the northeast coast of the North Island. The quake was relatively far away from the North Island, which meant there were no reports of injury or damage, however, it was also relatively shallow and sparked tsunami warnings for parts of the South Island and the Northern and Northeastern coasts of the North Island. All warnings were cancelled by 8:30am. Obviously we're fine, or I wouldn't be blogging at all.

We never felt a thing at our house, partly because of the distance, but mainly because it was 4:37am and we were asleep. The epicentre was a long way from Auckland, and we were unlikely to feel much if we had been awake.

In general, the coastal areas of Auckland are vulnerable to tsunami, however, our house is on high ground so, for us, the main danger is dealing with the disruption in essential services—water, sewerage, electricity. This assumes we’re home when a tsunami hits, of course, but there’s generally a fair bit of warning for us to get home or to higher ground if we’re not home. Family and friends around the country are at various other risk levels, and making contact after a disaster would be a problem.

Events like this, while not a direct threat to most New Zealanders, serve as a timely reminder to double check our emergency supplies, and to “Get Ready – Get Thru”. All of us, wherever we live, are at risk of natural disaster, though the specifics vary from place to place. For example, our risks include earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis that other areas may not face, but Similarly, in Auckland, we’re not at risk from blizzards. The important thing is for everyone to maintain emergency supplies relevant to the real risks they face, no matter where they live or what those risks might be.

Some day, our luck may run out, and we’ll fare better if we’re prepared for disaster. If that never happens, at least we’ll have the peace of mind that comes from knowing we’re prepared.

“Get Ready – Get Thru”

Our Internet connection has been down for the past three days due to a fault in the phone lines they’re currently trying to find and repair. When our connection is restored, I’ll add relevant links.

Fix, Fasten

New Zealand does a great job of creating commercials and campaigns designed to get New Zealanders to think about natural disasters. Their latest series is among the best yet.

The ads in this post are from EQC (the Earthquake Commission), which is responsible not just for earthquakes and preparedness, but also other natural disasters like tsunami, volcanic eruption, landslides, and hydrothermal events. The preparedness part is what these ads promote.

Specifically, they try to motivate people to fix and fasten anything that could come loose in an earthquake, things like tall furniture, hot water cylinders, chimneys, and even house foundations (to keep houses from sliding off their foundations in an earthquake), and it does so by promoting “Fix. Fasten. Don’t Forget.” a special section of EQC’s website with everything people need to know to, well, fix and fasten things.

The ad up top, “Cylinder”, is my favourite of the bunch. In 30 seconds it depicts a variety of people taking a small actions to keep people safe, ending with a man securing a hot water cylinder. “One small action can make a difference,” the onscreen text tells us as the man works.

They’re absolutely right, of course, but what makes these ads so effective is that they use everyday imagery—things completely unrelated to natural disaster—to drive home the point that small actions can prevent injury. The fact the ads have no dialogue helps to make the visuals stand out even more, I think. These are really good ads.

The ad below is the 15-second version of “Bookshelf”. It begins with one of the most powerful images in the series—a woman throwing out her arm to keep a man from being hit by a truck—and ends with a woman securing a bookshelf.

Together, these ads are quite different from the preparedness ads we usually see, which is part of what makes them so effective. They may just manage to cut through all the “noise” of advertising to make their point.

Still, I haven’t yet followed their advice, even though I’m quite aware of both risk and preparedness. We have some tall bookshelves that could topple in a severe jolt, and I’ve often thought about the importance of securing them. I’m sure I will get to it, though I’m obviously gambling that I’ll get to it before there’s a big jolt. I imagine most other people are doing the same.

And yet, if these ads at least get people thinking about what they need to do, that’s a major hurdle they’ve overcome. There’s no way to force people to do what’s best for themselves, after all.

Be that as it may, I fully intend to fix and fasten, and I won’t forget. Hopefully I’ll get to it before I need it.

Shattered earth

New Zealand’s most dangerous faultline—and one of the most dangerous ones in the world—is the Alpine Fault, which runs along the west of the South Island. It produces a M8 earthquake once every three centuries, more or less, and the last one was around 1717. So, scientists are going to drill into it.

It might seem like a risky idea, but it’s not particularly new. Scientists have drilled into faults before, usually after an earthquake. But with the Alpine Fault, they have a chance to look at a fault that hasn’t ruptured in nearly 300 years, but which has a high probability of producing a severe M8 earthquake sometime in the next 50 years. On average, the fault ruptures every 330 years, give or take 60 years.

So, scientist are drilling into it in a project called the Deep Fault Drilling Project (DFDP). They hope to better understand if better, and also maybe even find ways of providing advance warning.

A common question, included on GNS’ “DFDP-2 FAQs”, is: “Will drilling into the Alpine Fault cause a large earthquake?” We non-scientists naturally wonder about that. They answer:

No, for several reasons. The volume of rock affected by drilling is extremely small (with dimensions of the order of a few metres) compared to the scale of the Alpine Fault itself (with dimensions on the orders of tens to hundreds of kilometres), and the depth of penetration (1.3 km) is very shallow compared to the depths at which most earthquakes nucleate (several kilometres). Drilling operations will be conducted using techniques that minimize the degree of pressurization in the borehole and no large-volume fluid injection experiment will be undertaken. Finally, the low levels of earthquakes occurring naturally within several kilometres of the DFDP-2 drill-site, and their low magnitudes, indicate that the rock mass is generally not close to failing.

Nevertheless, local councils have emergency plans in place, just in case, but that’s something they’d have anyway—we still have no idea when the fault will rupture, and local councils have to be prepared all the time, just like local councils do in every other part of the country. In other words, the fact they’re drilling into the Alpine Fault doesn’t increase the need for emergency preparedness—it’s the same as it always was.

Hopefully, the DFDP will gain all the data they’re wishing for, yes, but also maybe it will help the development of early warning systems. Anything that does that is a good thing, and this project isn’t nearly as scary as it may sound.

Tsunami safety in Auckland

Much of coastal New Zealand is at risk of tsunami, and a lot of Auckland, which is built on an isthmus, is particularly vulnerable. Now we have a tool to evaluate that risk.

Auckland Council’s Civil Defence and Emergency Management has made an easy way to evaluate the threat from tsunami. Aucklanders need only go to the Tsunami Evacuation Maps, then click on their Local Board area. What pops up is a map of that Local Board area, often with squares drawn around specific areas that have some tsunami risk. Clicking on one of the squares (if any) opens a downloadable PDF map of that specific area, showing the risks within that area.

Risk areas are marked in one of three colours: Red is a Shore Exclusion Zone and should be avoided for 24 hours after an earthquake. Next are the Orange Evacuation Zone and the Yellow Evacuation Zone. Council advise that if the Red and Orange Zones need to be evacuated, there will be sufficient time to issue a warning. That may not be the case with the Yellow Zone—or any zone in a severe earthquake.

Their specific advice is that “In the case of a large earthquake (one it is hard to stand up in), unusual noises from the ocean, or changes in the ocean (e.g. the ocean rushing in or out), or you feel a weak, rolling earthquake that lasts for more than a minute,” then people should “Evacuate all zones. A wave may arrive within minutes or take more than an hour to arrive. The bottom line, as always, is to be prepared to move quickly because time to get to safety may be short.”

Earlier today, I looked at the map for our specific area and found we’re well within a part of the area deemed to be safe. There’s a Shore Exclusion Zone a few minutes away, but the nearest Orange or Yellow Zone is quite a way from us. The infamous hilly terrain of Auckland’s North Shore definitely works to our advantage, keeping us safe from tsunami risk.

I knew all this already, having looked at risk maps in the past, but I think it’s great that Auckland Council has made it so easy for anyone within the Council’s borders to check out tsunami risks for themselves. It makes it that much easier to Get Ready, Get Thru.

Remembering the big disaster

83 years ago today, New Zealand had its first major earthquake in a populated area since European settlement. The Hawkes Bay Earthquake is still the deadliest New Zealand disaster.

The 7.9 earthquake stuck at 10:47am and killed 256 people. It levelled most of the buildings in central Napier and Hastings, and the fires that broke out immediately destroyed many of the Napier buildings that survived the earthquake. Some 40 square kilometres of seabed was lifted up to become dry land.

The disaster revealed the need for building codes to deal with earthquakes, and much was learned by studying the buildings that survived, as well as those that didn’t. When the area was rebuilt, it was done in the Art Deco style that was popular at the time, making it one of the world’s best and most complete showcases for that style.

The video above is a 1965 documentary on the earthquakes, using silent film that was almost certainly shot the day after the earthquakes. They also added some footage from the 1960s to show how the area recovered.

At the time the documentary was made, the disaster had only been three decades earlier, and so, many people remembered it vividly. Now, more than eight decades after the events, there are few witnesses still living, all of them elderly. This makes it especially important, I think, for the rest of us to remember events like the Hawkes Bay Earthquake. The Internet makes that easy.

Can we feel it?

View Larger Map
Today I drove Nigel’s mum home, after her weeklong visit with us. Once we got there, we ran into a woman she knows who said she felt yesterday’s big Central New Zealand quake while on a farm near Hikutaia, which is about halfway between Thames and Paeroa on State Highway 26 (map above). That’s kind of unusual, and yet it isn’t.

In Auckland, we seldom feel earthquakes from other parts of the country, even when they’re pretty big. That has to do with a combination of factors, such as geography, geology, topography—all sorts of earth science stuff all rolled together. Even so, there are exceptions, and sometimes people DO feel big quakes from other parts of the country.

When last month’s big Central New Zealand quake hit, residents of the highrise Metropolis apartment building in Auckland’s CBD said they felt it, and often people in highrises are the only Aucklanders who will. However, that quake was also felt in Hamilton, and they seldom feel Wellington quakes, either. I haven’t seen any reports of people in Auckland or Hamilton feeling the latest one, which makes sense: The focus at the moment is, appropriately, on the people who were directly affected.

Because of all this, when I heard the woman’s claim to have felt the quake at the bottom of the Coromandel Peninsula, I was a little incredulous. But, I wasn’t there, so how would I know? All I can say for certain that the only way I knew the quakes were happening were the constant alerts—one every few seconds or minutes—showing up on my iPad, sent by the NZ Quake App from GNS Science. I have never seen so many alerts in such a short period of time—but I never felt any of the quakes.

The only quakes I’ve felt in Auckland have been in Auckland, like the two in March of this year or the one in February, 2007.

So, it’s unusual, but not impossible, for Aucklanders to feel earthquakes happening in other parts of the country. Hopefully, there will never be a catastrophic one in my lifetime, because I wouldn’t be surprised if we felt that, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone.

In the event of an emergency

Ever since the earthquake swarm in Central New Zealand over the past few days, there’s been renewed interest in preparedness and the natural disaster risks we face. Today I’m taking a look at both, and a bit more.

First, though, this post from GeoNet pretty well explains what's been going on in central New Zealand recently, what they know and what they don't know. They’re really getting good at explaining this stuff.

In the video above, faultlines and earthquakes in New Zealand are explained by Kelvin Berryman, from GNS Science. Earlier this year, I posted two videos about the earthquake and volcano risks for Auckland. Taken together, these videos explain what risks we face.

Knowing the risks is one thing, being prepared for them is another. I’ve frequently mentioned Get Thru, the official Civil Defence website to help New Zealanders prepare for natural disaster. Most of the information is relevant for anyone, anywhere. I’ve also talked before about how if one is in an emergency, sending a text message is more likely to work than trying to phone someone. This is because power may be disrupted, and also because the networks become jammed.

So, I suggested that after waiting awhile to let people needing help get through, it could be a good idea to use text messages to send a quick update to Twitter and Facebook to let a lot of people know all at once that you’re okay. And, again, I must stress: If you’re okay and not in danger, DON’T text: There may be people in dire need of help, so please stay out of their way.

When I first talked about this strategy, I also said that it’s important to keep your cellphone fully charged—at all times, if possible. That’s true, but I saw a Tweet after the largest quake this weekend that pointed out a few more things: Wifi connections and Bluetooth drain the battery, so in an emergency, turn them off. Also, turn down the brightness of the phone’s display. This will help preserve battery life, because in an emergency no one can know how long it will be until the phone can be charged.

Okay, so knowing the risks and being prepared are important, but the final piece is knowing that something has happened. GeoNet Quake is an App available for iOS and Android that displays earthquake activity. If you allow the App to send push notifications, it will let you know anytime there’s any sort of earthquake anywhere in New Zealand, or you can use filters. For example, I’d select Auckland as well as strong quakes anywhere so it doesn’t tell me about every little weak quake anywhere in the country.

Here in Auckland, we have an Auckland Civil Defence App available for iOS Devices (I don’t know if they’ve created an Android version). The App isn’t perfect, but it is a way to find out about any kind of civil defence emergency in the Auckland region.

So, the thing is to know the risks, to prepare for them and to be aware of dangers as they happen. Fortunately, thanks to the Internet and social media, all of these are easy to do. Actually doing them could save lives.

Finally, below is a more lighthearted advice video from a guy who’s the partner of a guy I follow on Twitter. Preparedness is important, but that doesn’t mean we have to be dour about it!

Get Ready, Get Thru!

Shaken

Earthquakes are pretty rare in Auckland. This afternoon, we had two within 5 minutes. It was pretty scary.

The first earthquake struck at 4:01pm. It was a light one, only magnitude 3.1, with a depth of 4km and centred about 15km from Auckland. I was sitting at my desk at the time, and felt a couple sharp jolts and rattling in the house, and my computer monitor swayed. It felt much stronger than any earthquake I’ve felt, certainly stronger than the first one I felt in Auckland, just over six years ago.

Roughly five minutes later, we had a second earthquake: It was a moderate quake, magnitude 3.9, about 6km deep and in roughly the same location, 15km from Auckland. This one was a much bigger deal: The house shook and rattled quite a lot and it went on for easily four times the length of the first one, though still only a few seconds (earthquakes seem to last longer than they really do). This one scared me, primarily because it lasted longer, and also because it was stronger. Nigel didn’t notice because he was standing in the kitchen at the time.

What also made the earthquakes scary is that they both happened under Mototapu Island, which is right next to Rangitoto Island—a dormant volcano that was the most recent to erupt, some 700 years ago. Experts say that earthquakes will precede a new volcano for days or weeks. They don’t know where or when one will emerge, just that it’s almost a certainty one will—eventually.

The video at top of the post is of Richard Woods, the Hazard Advisor for the Civil Defence and Emergency Management department of Auckland Council. He explains the earthquake risk for Auckland. In the video below, he talks about the volcano risk for Auckland.

It’s worth noting that the biggest threats to Auckland are still what they are for most of New Zealand: Flooding from storms. Coastal regions are also at risk from tsunamis, something that experts say are a bigger threat than they used to think.

Nowhere is without risk from natural disaster. Life on this planet is far more tenuous than any of us want to realise. So, with the possibility that some disaster could kill us or destroy everything we own, we all ought to live our lives as if it’s our last day—carpe diem, and all that. Most of us don’t do that, of course: We choose to believe that disaster won’t happen.

Disaster didn’t hit Auckland today. It probably won’t the next time the earth shakes here, either. One day, however, it may. And that’s enough to leave anyone a little shaken.



Update: GeoNet's press release has more information about the quakes, including links to information about the 2005 and 2007 quakes.

The ShakeOut

Today was the New Zealand ShakeOut, a national earthquake drill. At 9:29am, we were to drop, cover and hold. Around 1.3 million Kiwis took part. We took part at home, which confused the dogs, but which was otherwise fine.


There are several things that I thought worked well: A couple minutes before the start, Civil Defence Tweeted to get ready. At 9:29am, the radio station NewstalkZB and TVNZ’s TV One both played the Civil Defence emergency sound (for a few seconds). And—that was it.

Here’s what could have been better: A status update on Facebook, either like Twitter or as it began. Last week, Auckland Civil Defence launched an iPhone App that, among other things, can transmit emergency warnings. It was silent, missing a great opportunity to test the system in real life.

Civil Defence says they’re not planning on making this an annual event, and that’s quite possibly a good idea, since having them too often might make people as complacent as having no drills at all. But when they do another drill, here’s what I’d like to see:

• Use of social media as if a real emergency was happening: They would probably need a disclaimer, but they should send out emergency notices as if the threat was real.
• Also, they should activate emergency alert on the phone app (hopefully they’ll have an Android version by then, too). They really need to test it as if there was a large-scale emergency because we don’t want it failing if there ever is one.
• Pick a better date. This year, the event was at 9:26am on September 26—9:26, 9/26, which would be catchy were it not for one thing: New Zealand writes its dates the other way around (26 September, not September 26; weirdly, 26/9 is the 269th day of the year…). So, they had to resort to the convoluted “ 9:26-26:9”. I think they should pick something easier to remember, like 10:10am on October 10) 10:10 on 10/10. I may be in the minority on that one, though.

Still, the effort raised awareness, which is always a good thing. So I think it was a good first effort, but we have to keep awareness going. The “Get Ready, Get Thru” site has great resources to help people prepare.

And, yes, I did feel a little silly crawling under my desk at 9:26am.

The children teach well

This new ad is part of New Zealand’s Get Thru campaign and is designed to remind people—teach them, actually—what to do in the event of an earthquake. Apparently, their review of the Canterbury earthquakes found that too few people knew what to do to protect themselves when an earthquake hits.

While it might seem that this wouldn’t protect people if the building they’re in collapses, the reality is that most modern buildings are built to withstand an earthquake, so the “Triangle of Life” method isn’t necessarily the most important survival technique. Instead, people are most at risk from falling objects, and "Drop, Cover and Hold" will help keep them safe from injury—and possible death.

Get Thru’s advertising has been focusing mainly on encouraging Kiwis to “Get Ready, Get Thru”. Advertising with specific survival techniques is a great idea, and using kids to do it is brilliant: Instead of tuning out, cynical adults stop and say, “aw, look at those cute kids!” and then absorb the message. Kids do, too.

“Get Ready, Get Thru” are also promoting New Zealand’s largest-ever earthquake drill, and what they say is the world’s first nationwide drill, called the “New Zealand ShakeOut”. It will be held on Wednesday, September 26 at 9:26am, and people at home, work and school are encouraged to practice "Drop, Cover and Hold".

And if nothing else, we now know that earthquakes cause salamis.

An anniversary

At 12:51pm on February 22, 2011—one year ago today—an earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand. 182 people died. Billions in property was damaged or destroyed, as this became the most expensive natural disaster as a percentage of GDP that the world has yet seen.

Everyone in New Zealand has been touched, directly or indirectly, and far too many people are connected in some way to the people lost. But everyone is affected, even if only in small ways, like the taxpayer money going to rebuild the city, or that our premiums for house and contents insurance are going up by about a third. Still, that’s nothing compared to the human loss.

The above video is a trailer for the feature documentary, When a City Falls. The film is now available on DVD. Even the trailer evokes that day.

The New Zealand Herald has published before and after photos.

And, with thousands of aftershocks, big and small, since that day a year ago, the nightmare faced by the people of Christchurch is far from over.

Notice from afar

There are plenty of people who love to make fun of social media, to belittle it and the people who use it. Mind you, there are people who love to make fun of cupcakes, too. But the critics of social media, I think, too often ignore the positive things.

I’ve written many times before about how I’ve used social media to tell a lot of people that I’m okay after some event in this part of the world. This morning, it was a 7.3 earthquake near Raoul Island, the largest and northernmost of the Kermadec Islands, a very long way from Auckland. However, the first I heard of it was actually a Tweet from an American friend asking if we were okay.

So, after replying to my friend, I Tweeted: “For my friends outside of New Zealand, the earthquake was in the Kermedecs, about 1100km (684 miles) NE of the North Island.” To cover as many bases as possible, I expanded on my Tweet on both Google+ and Facebook:

“For my friends outside of New Zealand, this morning's earthquake was in the Northernmost part of the Kermedec Islands, more than 1100km (684 miles) NE of the North Island—way too far away to be felt in Auckland.

So, yes, we are fine, no we never felt it, and thanks for the concern of those who have asked me about it privately!”

I linked to the article that this blog post also links to. I suppose that draws this blog post even further into my “public awareness campaign”. Or whatever. The point is, all this new media/social media makes this sort of notification fast and easy.

On the other hand, as I also said on Twitter, without social media, “lots of folks wouldn’t know me & wouldn’t wonder if I was OK after an earthquake near NZ.” So, part of the reason I needed to use all those social media outlets to inform folks was because they knew me (and, so, wondered about my safety) precisely because of social media. Man, modern life can get weird and complicated!

And yet, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One year later

One year ago today, an earthquake struck Christchurch in the small hours of the night. I knew nothing about it at first, and couldn’t figure out why my social media pals were expressing concern about me. I wrote about all that back then.

Of course it turned out that the September quake was a foreshock to the main event, the deadly quake in February of this year. The financial bad news keeps getting worse, both for the country (double the budget deficit originally predicted) and for the survivors (and improvements they made to their homes after 2007 won’t be compensated unless it increased the size of the house, meaning losses of tens of thousands of dollars for some people).

And then there’s the human loss from February, a pain still close to the surface for those who lost loved ones. It will be years before those people—and, indeed, Christchurch and the entire nation—fully recover.

Still, the first anniversary of an event is a turning point for many people, the point at which one starts to move on. It would be easier for the people of the Christchurch region to move on if they weren’t enduring thousands of aftershocks, even today. That, too, will subside some day, hopefully soon.

One year ago today, the whole series of events that have become central to New Zealand began. I think it’s important that we as a nation take time to remember, even as those of us who can try to move on.

Perspective relativity

Today there was an earthquake in Virginia. My first reaction was, Virginia?!! They’re pretty rare in the northeast of the US, enough so that it struck me as really odd.

A 5.8/5.9 quake may not sound like much, especially with the much stronger jolts that hit Christchurch or Japan, but it’s certainly strong enough to cause property damage (and it did) and could have killed someone had they been under the falling debris and collapsing walls at the time. A friend has family members who live in the general area of the epicentre and they sustained some damage.

It didn’t take long for people to start mocking east coasters over the earthquake. The AP reported that much of it came from the west coast of the US, though I saw some from New Zealand, too. Apparently ex-comedian-turned-rightwing-pundit Dennis Miller led that charge. This doesn’t surprise me. On his best day, the most appropriate phrase to describe him is “arrogant asshole”. But, I digress.

I kept seeing snarky Tweets and other online comments, so I posted a Tweet and then on Google+ (which contained that Tweet). It said:

I'm puttin' on my preachin' hat!!

Look: Earthquakes, no matter how small and insignificant they may be when compared to other quakes, nevertheless can be terrifying to the people feeling them. Whether those people "should" feel frightened or whether they're "overreacting" is irrelevant. Telling them that doesn't change what they're feeling—in fact, it can make them feel worse.

I've seen lots of people piling on the snark about the earthquake in the eastern US. There's a difference between gentle humour (I've seen some) and gutless, bitchy snark from folks belittling the people who were genuinely frightened by—and this is hugely important—a rare event for the eastern US.

In time, the folks in the eastern US will calm down and their sense of perspective will return. In the meantime, more humanity, less snark, please! Oh, and remember this the next time there's a natural event you think people are overreacting to: Don't make me get out my preachin' hat!! :-)

I was trying not to be as bitchy toward the snarky people as I was feeling, but I probably didn’t succeed. It’s just that it annoyed me immensely that people were belittling the real fear that people along the east coast experienced.

Because such an event is rare, there’s every reason for people to be upset by it. But we’re talking about a region that’s on edge with the tenth anniversary of 9/11 coming up, a fact my friend Jason reminded me of. For many people, their first thought would be that it was a terrorist attack. One American news report I saw showed people in New York City expressing exactly that feeling.

It seems to me that we now have an almost need to make fun of the experiences of others, to belittle them. Social media just speeds that up and increases the audience. These snarky people really ought to stop and realise that next time people could be piling onto them. The perspective of people toward events like is relative, after all.

Six months later

Yesterday marked six months since the deadly Christchurch earthquake. In this video from the New Zealand Herald, survivors of collapsed buildings talk about their experiences and their lives since that fateful day.

Raw video of the 6.0 aftershock

In this video from the New Zealand Herald, Cameraman Jo Morgan happened to be filming an interview when yesterday’s 6.0 aftershock hit. The speed with which the liquefaction spreads was one of the things that most stuck me about the video.

Update: Yesterday's biggest quakes have been upgraded to 5.6 and 6.3.