Adventurer

My better half is really concerned about natural disasters and especially Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Fires.
We are moving soon to NZ and almost definitely going to live in the Auckland area (at least within 100km of the Intl airport anyway).
Our dream is to find a nice house or location to build a nice house which could become our ‘family’ house for generations.
So we would like to look in the areas which are likely to have the least amount of risk from those mentioned. (I keep telling her that she not worry about the volcanoes- it is the killer kiwi birds and the crocodiles we should worry about!).
Re Tsunamis she obviously does not want to live too close to a beach or sea level etc.
Re earthquakes my research shows that the Auckland area does not seem to be too bad for fault compared to many other areas in NZ such as Wellington.
But I am having difficulty finding out about risks of Volcanoes.

Does anyone have any information or links to articles about this etc??

Buzzy--Bee

The whole of NZ is an earthquake zone. If I was clever enough to predict where the next BIG one would strike I wouldn't have any money worries for the rest of my life.

Same goes for Volcanoes. Errrr stay away from Ruapeho.

Cheers

Buzzy

extrameant

http://www.geonet.org.nz/latest.html shows where all the recent earthquakes were. You can see the fault line shows up quite clearly.

Auckland is built on lots of volcanoes. The last one to appear was 800 years ago, and another could happen anytime. They monitor some volcanoes on that site also.

livewire

Auckland is a pretty safe place to live as far as volcanoes go, there are thermal pools around but that is about the sum of active volcanic activity for the area. As for earthquakes - not really a problem unless you're on a local fault line.

IMO the largest risk is from the weather - heavy rain, storms, high winds etc. and their consequences such as land slips and flooding. If you're concerned about tsunami or global warming and rising sea levels then stay away from low lying coastal properties.

extrameant

http://www.arc.govt.nz/arc/index.cfm...3-976C875849E2 This says if you live in Ak for 50 years, you have a 1 in 20 chance of there being a volcano erupting in the region.

I remember a kiwi who was into all that sort of stuff telling me that there had been an eruption every 800 years approx in AK, and another is due. I can't substantiate his claims though. All kiwis are told to make sure they have water stored, food, torches etc, cos dissasters are a real risk. I always thought I would be OK for water cos the hot water cylinder would stay full and i could get water from that, however, we got a burst water mains near us and it emptied immediately.

extrameant

I've just realised that ARC article implies there is on average a new volcano in the AK region every 1000 years, and the last one was 600 years ago. So my kiwi friend was wrong on both counts then. Anyway, you can't trust statistics. Everyone knows that the million to one chance crops up 9 times out of ten.

livewire

But not when you're buying lottery tickets, unforunately .

Auckland is pretty safe, that's probably one of the reasons why so many people live here and not in the capital city.

foolsgold

With the nature of the magma field under Auckland, the safest palce to be is on one of the other volcanos. They aren't going to go again, it'll be a new one. most likey out in the gulf somewhere. So pretty much anywhere out west really would be very safe.

livewire

Yeah, just don't live in Henderson. Volcanoes and earthquakes will be the least of your worries over there