Quake Strikes New Zealand

[Jeffro]

I know Ryan Hellyer and possibly Elpie are in the New Zealand area, are you two ok following the earth quake?

http://us.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf...ake/index.html

[Ryan]

Well I'll be darned! That little quake made headline knews.

I was sitting here reading the forum when that happened and thought "geeze, why the hell do a I feel queazy?". Then I realised there as an earth quake. I looked at the Earth quake report site a few minutes later though and there was no record of it. I guess it took a while for them to process it (they usually only take a few minutes to pop up on the site). I assumed it was just a piddly little local one, but it seems not.

I live about 400 km south of where it hit.

I went for a trek to find ice to skate on about 30 mins after it hit and I did notice a couple of trees which had fallen on the road which I needed to drive around. I'm guess they were knocked over by the quake.

It looks like the quake wasn't that bad, but it hit REALLY close to the biggest city on the South Island so there's bound to be some damage up there.

[Ryan]

Holy crap! Looks like Christchurch is in a bit of a mess! I used to work only a few blocks from where this photo was taken:


And this wasn't very far away from there either:


Scary stuff. Glad I only got some pleasant swaying!

[dgwyer]

Wow, scary stuff, hope no one was badly hurt and glad to hear you are OK Ryan! Living in the UK it is all too easy to forget that things like this happen all the time around the world.

[Ryan]

Thanks.

It's bad, but we're pretty well sorted to handle this sort of thing. I think that's why there haven't been any deaths reported, albeit there's probably a little luck involved in that too. We know these things are going to happen so plans are in place to deal with it. I'm glad it didn't hit down here though. I live in an old multi-story building and I doubt it would hold up well in a big quake.

The Prime Minister thinks the cost will only be about $2 billion which is easily affordable by the New Zealand Earthquake Commission who are in charge of paying for the costs, so no one should be majorly out of pocket due to it at least.