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New Zealand's Tectonic Dragon Awakens
- knz 10y agoThe article barely mentions the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes - that did more to awaken people to the potential hazard. Most kiwis know about the Napier earthquake in 1932 but it's a distant memory and until 2010 big earthquakes were always something that occurred in remote places like Dusky Sound or Inangahua.
- mrmondo 10y agoYep worked in Christchurch hospital through both, hell of a thing, destroyed the entire city.
- knz 10y agoI left Christchurch 10 years ago for the US but still get back most years. The first few trips back after the earthquake(s) were very unsettling - destroyed doesn't fully describe just how different the city is now. It's great to finally see a new city emerging now.
- mrmondo 10y agoI visit every 6-12 months, and to be honest, with all the heritage buildings gone, it's just another boring, white lower class city. Yes the port hills are still there and still amazing but it's not anything close to what it was.
- EdwardDiego 10y agoNo it didn't. It destroyed large sections of the CBD, and the eastern suburbs, and that's it. Don't exaggerate please, my city is very much still here and present.
- mrmondo 10y agoIt's very, _very_ hard for me to hold back an emotional response right now. It destroyed practically everything, I worked in the CBD as I said, at the hospital, I know what buildings were brought down because I watched bodies from those buildings enter my building and many of them not leave, I then didn't flee Christchurch straight away, I stayed a year after the second quake to help where I could while I thought I was still valuable. The tilt slab concrete crap that remained was no part of Christchurch they were warehouses and storage facilities turned industrial or commercial sites. The buildings that were destroyed were Christchurch, did some of them rebuild - sure but not many of them and most never can because they wouldn't be up to code. I'm leaving this hear as to be quite honest I think you're only trying to get an emotional backlash that would make me look irrational.
- vosper 10y agoI grew up in Christchurch and lived there until I was in my late 20s. I moved to London like many Kiwis do, but I was back when the Darfield earthquake hit. I moved to SF just before the February quake and came back to the city to visit a few weeks later, due to a death in the family (unrelated to the quake) and because I couldn't stand watching it all on TV and not being there. I've since returned to Christchurch most years to visit family and friends. I completely agree with your feelings out the change to the city. Before I left for London Christchurch was coming into its own, arts and music were blooming (I was involved with RDU), downtown was finally being revitalized - there were cool places in the old brick buildings on Poplar Lane, alternatives to the miserable Strip bars where adults could go out and have fun. I really felt the city had bright prospects as an alternative to Auckland that wasn't sleepy and centered around agriculture. New Zealand's second city. Then the earthquake came and ruined everything. Visiting the wreckage of the central city depressed me every time. Also, whenever I visit the interesting things that remain (there's no replacing the Dux in the old Arts Centre) are scattered now all over the city and require a lot of driving or an expensive taxi to get to. I just can't see myself moving back, at least not for 10-20 years, when we see how this rebuild plays out. It's Auckland or another country, now.
- EdwardDiego 10y ago
- my_first_acct 10y agoPeople in the Pacific Northwest might be interested in this previous New Yorker article about the Cascadia subduction zone, and the earthquake that will someday hit: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-...
- ChuckMcM 10y agoYup, when that one goes its going to make quite a mess.
- NamTaf 10y agoThis was a really good, morbid read. Thank you.
- tajen 10y agoIndeed, the order of the story is interesting: Starts with the trees that are all the same age in a given place at an 8-months precision, continues with Indian stories related to an event at 50-year precision, and confirmed by Japanese record tracking at a few minutes precision... And the story continues with the primary earthquake, followed by all secondary events, each increasing in exponential damage. It's a great, relatable report of the state of knowledge. But I can't represent myself the map or extent of this damage. Do we expect 5m people to die in Seatle and Vancouver, or are we expecting rather 100m people to die from Los Angeles to Alaska, and another 1m in Japan?
- northisup 10y agoAre we surprised that Mordor is a land full of fire and dragons?
- danieltillett 10y agoAs a resident of Australia I have always liked that I live in the middle of a contential plate that has not been under a mile of ice in the recent past. Sure we lack majestic mountains, but geological stability is a nice alternative.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 10y agoAustralia is geologically quiet... too quiet.
- sunstone 10y agoDon't mention the snakes :O ... and spiders, box jellies and killer koalas. Ah white sharks and salt water crocs. Have I missed anything?
- knz 10y agoDrop bears? More seriously, didn't Australia previously have some geological activity? I've heard of lava tubes near Cairns and have visited the Sunshine Coast where I believe there are (dormant?) volcanos?
- flukus 10y agoThose volcanoes are a feature of the area, but they seem to be very much extinct, not dormant.
- idlewords 10y agoThe deadliest animals in Australia, by far, are horses and cattle. That's the secret Australians don't want you to know!
- hga 10y ago
- mcbain 10y agoThe article only touches on the more troubling of NZ fault lines - if the Alpine Fault ruptures, or "unzips" as it is commonly referred to, then really bad things will happen. M8+ earthquakes and major changes to the rest of the South Island. And this is somewhat likely in the next 50 years. https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Earthquakes/Major-Faults-in-New-Zealand/Alpine-Fault https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Earthqua...
- my_first_acct 10y agoHere are a couple of maps showing 10 years of New Zealand earthquakes. The map of deep earthquakes gives a remarkably clear view of the Hikurangi subduction zone (color = depth) https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Earthquakes/New-Zealand-Earthquakes/Where-do-earthquakes-happen-in-NZ https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Earthqua...
- Lerc 10y agoDrone video of the rupture from the Quake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITbplXBtM8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITbplXBtM8M
- boznz 10y agoHarden up guys.. Still a million times better living here than most other places IMHO
- eikenberry 10y agoWhy? What makes it nice?
- module0000 10y agoNo NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc... /s
- mrmondo 10y agoUm, NZ does have a huge amount of internet / phone spying, most so than many places and it's part of the five eyes, so I'd think twice before posting about what you don't understand.
- module0000 10y agoI think I understand what NZ has, and while it may be deplorable...there are degrees of deplorable, and it's preferable to my(US citizen) current climate of deplorable.
- damianknz 10y agoLOL, we still have AOS, SIS, GCSB, AVSEC and of relevance to this article, EQNZ.
- knz 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waihopai_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waihopai_Station may be of interest...
- foxylad 10y agoImagine a tiny Canada with much better weather and an obsession with rugby instead of ice hockey.
- vorg 10y ago> the Maori arrived, in the thirteenth century Is the reason there's no inhabitants in NZ who arrived before 1300 AD because earthquakes and volcanos killed them all off? That big mountain island in the sea just off Auckland called Rangitoto only popped up about 600 years ago and its Maori name means "Bleeding into the Sky" so I guess they saw it all.
- civilian 10y agoNo, the Polynesian colonization of the pacific islands just happened pretty late in history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#History_of_the_Polynesian_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#History_of_the_Polyn...
- Taniwha 10y agoYes NZ was just about the last place on the planet discovered and settled by humans. That's partly because the Polynesian settling of the Pacific was done from Taiwan across the north to the Americas and then back across the south
- civilian 10y ago"to the Americas" -- do we have proof that they made it to the Americas? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140318-polynesian-chickens-pacific-migration-america-science/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140318-polyn...
- vorg 10y agoMaybe he meant Hawaii (now part of U.S., North America) and Easter Island (now part of Chile, South America)!
- Taniwha 10y agoThey brought kumara, a sweet potato, back to NZ with them from the Americas. There's also possible evidence they brought chickens to Chile, and I believe some evidence of Polynesian canoe designs showing up in California
- EdwardDiego 10y agoThis article is so full of factual errors it's not funny. 1) "Kaikoura, sixty miles north of Christchurch" - it's closer to 90 miles - in a straight line across the ocean. If you are driving, it's even further. 2) "The North Island, where the capital, Wellington, lies, is part of the Australian plate, and its landscape is dominated by two dozen active volcanoes." - 24 active volcanoes in the North Island? Pity that we're only monitoring 11 of them then. https://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/ https://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/ 3) "that the earthquake, like the one that devastated Christchurch in 2010" - It happened in 2011. The initiating earthquake happened in 2010, yes, but the aftershock that killed people and brought down buildings in ChCh occurred on Feb 22 2011.
- NeutronBoy 10y agoRegarding your point 2 - some of those are volcanic fields that contain multiple volcanoes.
- EdwardDiego 10y agoAuckland volcanic field contains multiple extinct volcanoes, it's monogenetic.
- my_first_acct 10y agoPer [1], the epicenter of the Kaikoura earthquake was 59 miles from Christchurch. The New Yorker article reads, "But Monday’s magnitude-7.8 earthquake, centered near Kaikoura, sixty miles north of Christchurch...". So perhaps an editing error (a misplaced modifier), rather than an outright blunder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kaikoura_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kaikoura_earthquake