Today there was a huge earthquake in Christchurch. Whilst only a 6.3 it was only 5km deep and very close to the city. There is a large amount of damage, many buildings have collapsed and many fatalities (65 so far and most buildings haven't yet been searched).

Back in September there was a 7.3 in the same area which caused a lot of damage, but no fatalities, mainly as it happened in the middle of the night, but this time it happened just before 1pm on a weekday.

More info

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Everyone I know and work with is safe, other than minor property damage.

Hi Mike
Been following this on the TV, one hell of a mess.
I looked up your profile as soon as I saw the first bit & saw you are in Auckland so not to close to the big bit lets hope there's no more.

Over here its been chaos with 2 cyclones on the west coast & 4 mini tornado's ripping through Karratha yesterday, left a hell of a mess, no-one up there was hurt bad & I spoke with my son last night & again today, our house is OK with no damage so far.
When I rang him @ 1300 our time the current cyclone was directly on him & the phone was a bit wonky so going to ring again later today to see how he went.

The whole of OZ & NZ are topsy turvy lately, stay safe mate.

Cheers
Barry

Oh Mike I was thinking of you too!  Unbelievable.  So pleased to see that you and yours are okay.  I don't know how many other NZ members we have but I am keeping my fingers crossed for you all.  What an absolutely horrific thing.  Crazy times.

My thoughts and prayers are going out to everyone who is having to deal with these natural disasters......just terrible, terrible  :-/
 
Kate

Mike,
glad you and yours are okay.  Thought about you first thing when I saw the news.

Carolyn

Will be keeping all of you in our prayers. Scary stuff when the earth rocks. :(

Joe

Terrible....been following it on the news.

So glad you are safe.

Glad to hear our NZ friends are well. We heard this morning my  mom's brother & sister in law are on a tour in NZ. They were scheduled to be in Christchurch today, but the group is staying on in Wellington until they figure out what is supposed to happen next. So glad to hear they checked in as well.

Mike, been keeping up with the Quake on the news.. I am so glad that you and yours are okay and all the rest of our NZ Family Members.. I will continue to keep you all uplifted in Prayers.

Christy, I'm also Praying for your Aunt & Uncle's safety while their over there...

Peace & Blessings
Lady Luv

I'm glad to see you were well out of harms way Mike.  My first thought was of you on hearing the initial reports this morning.  I'll be saying prayers for your brethren in Christchurch.

-Dennis-

Nothing too much to report overnight. There have been multiple people rescued from collapsed buildings but also bodies.

The CBD (city centre) seems to have been hit the worst with many buildings that haven't collapsed being badly damaged. The heart of the second biggest city in NZ has been ripped out.

We're getting help from Australia with specialist search and rescue staff arriving overnight and more today. NZ got offers of help from all over the world including Australia, US, Japan, Israel, Singapore, Europe and many others.

There are plenty of doctors here. There was a medical conference going on with over 400 doctors from all over the world, all are helping out. Similarly there was a conference here in Wellington (400 miles away)(I'm working down here this week) for NZ civil defence staff, so they are being flown back.

All the people with CH I've been in contact with via this forum are in the North Island, so all are likely to be safe, but given that NZ is a small country, only just over 4 million people, virtually everyone will know people affected by this.

Mike, thanks for keeping us informed of what is going on there.

Glad that you are safe, and my heart goes out to all who are affected.   :(

All the best,

George

thanks for checking in -- we do worry about you guys... ya'll have been having a rough time lately... Stay safe... prayers are with you... :-*

A terrible story but I'm glad you are on the north island Mike. A lot of death from what I hear.  :(

Charlie

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected by the quake!  :(

I heard the report as I was on the way to school this morning, but did not have time to check in on the computer to see if you had posted.  Very glad you did!  Glad you are well.  Is there anything we as a CH community can do to help?  I know things are still shaking out, but as things develop if there is any way we can be or service please let us know.

Jerry

The rescue effort is still ongoing with specialist teams arriving from all over the world. At some locations they are still pulling people alive out from the rubble, but elsewhere they are saying that some locations were unsurvivable.

The death toll is currently 75, but they have just been concentrating on getting the living out. There are 300+ people still missing, with this expecting to become NZ's worst ever disaster (257 people died when an Air NZ plane crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica). It isn't just people from NZ, with one building containing a Japanese language school which contained many people from Japan, but is now just a pile of rubble.

It's obvious that a lot of the infrastructure has been badly damaged, 50% of homes are without power, 80% without water / sewage and the gas supply has been turned off. It will take a lot of work to repair this.

Luckily the hospitals and airport suffered relatively little damage, with casualties being treated not just in Christchurch but all over the country.

Christchurch had a lot of old buildings, with a large number of these being severely damaged or destroyed, including the cathedral where 22 people are missing with the spire a pile of rubble and rubble filling the centre of the church.

This just seems to be unreal. Here in NZ we know we're on an active tectonic plate with thousands of small earthquakes each year. We've also got a few volcanoes and Auckland is built on a volcano field. But the reality of it happening like this takes a while to sink in.

Melissa wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2011 at 8:48pm:

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected by the quake!  :(

DITTO Mike...

This is worse than we imagined. I saw some fairly detailed news on the mess in Christchurch this evening. I hadn't known about all the sanitary and other problems. This thing was big. Is it true that several months ago there was a smaller event like this?

Hold on folks.

Charlie

LadyLuv wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2011 at 11:27am:

Melissa wrote on Feb 22nd, 2011 at 8:48pm: My thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected by the quake!  :( DITTO Mike...

I second that

Charlie wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2011 at 8:49pm:

This is worse than we imagined. I saw some fairly detailed news on the mess in Christchurch this evening. I hadn't known about all the sanitary and other problems. This thing was big. Is it true that several months ago there was a smaller event like this?

There was a larger earthquake on the 4th September last year (7.3) which happened in the early hours of the morning, but miraculously nobody was killed. Since then there have been thousands of aftershocks, including a pretty bad one on Boxing Day (again no fatalities).

Tuesday's earthquake was technically an aftershock from the first one and a lot weaker at 6.3, but it was very shallow at only 3 miles and very close to the city centre (6 miles), it was this combination, along with already weakened structures that resulted in the devastation seen.

The current confirmed death toll, where there is a body which has been identified and relatives have been informed, is 92, but there are grave concerns for another 238. In one building they expect there to have been 120 people killed, which included a foreign language school with possibly 60 people from overseas missing.

To put things into perspective, the US population is 307 million compared to the NZ population of 4.4 million. Scaling the death toll to the US population means that the likely toll of 300 would be scaled to about 21,000. Scaling to the UK population (62 million) would give 4,300.

The Christchurch population is 376,000, which means that the earthquake killed about 1 person in 1000. Everyone in Christchurch will know people who were killed.

Some photos...

Dust cloud minutes after the earthquake
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Pine Gould building collapse
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CTV / language school building - it was a 5 story building where possibly 100+ people died
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Cathedral - 22 dead?
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A bus - 2 were crushed like this with fatalities
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A car - many died when rubble fell on vehicles
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Horrible......simply horrible....

Continuously saddening.  So terrible.

A horrid thing. It looks worse and sadder every time.  :-[

Charlie

Sorry I'm late checking in with you, Mike, but I'm still out with clean-up crews after cyclone Yasi gave us such a touch up and electricity is still a bit of a treat.

Good to hear that you and our other Kiwi CHeads are alright but our heart goes out to all those affected. It's only a small ditch, mate, and we're ready to hop it while we're wanted or needed, just as you've always done for us.

The ANZAC spirit will always live.

This is one of the little ones we don't hear about in the news its from a contributor to a renewable energy site that I contribute to, he's a top bloke who will give you all the time in the world to help.

He's from up Aussie Brian's way  a place called Lowood.
He posted this yesterday & is still awaiting news,sure hope things turn out OK for his family.

Cheers
Barry

Quote from Bob
" Hi All

I just had news that my nephew is trapped on the 3rd floor of the CTV building along with 18 others in his class, mobile phone contact, this morning the rescuers said it is to dangerous for them to go in as the structure is badly damaged, my wife is going there today to meet with her sister and support her.

Bob "

Today it was a week since the earthquake and all over the country there were services with a two minutes silence to remember the dead and injured. Being down in Wellington for work, I joined thousands of people for a short service in the grounds of parliment.

There are currently 155 confirmed dead and this is expected to rise to about 240, which is a lot lower than some of the initial estimates.

Just as I was about to write this, Wellington had a 4.5 quake, which although it only lasted about 5 seconds it was more than enough to get my heart racing. Then about half an hour later there was another aftershock in Christchurch which I also felt here (400 miles away).

A 4.5 is about 60 times weaker than the 6.3 that hit Christchurch and it also lasted a lot longer, so I can only imagine what that felt like.

The strongest one I've ever felt was a 5.4 in Wales in 1984, which is the largest onshore earthquake ever recorded in the UK. I'll be quite happy not to break that record.

Hang on to something Mike. We don't want to see you on the news because of that!

155 dead is a horror story and we're just getting a handle on the amount of physical devastation to the area.

Hunker down, Mike.

Charlie