scrubbedexpat141

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Christchurch again. They can only have just about finished rebuilding since the last one, poor sods.

BEVS

It is Seddon/Hanmer. 2 hours from Xchurch . 4 hours from us.

Tsunami alert for east coastal areas.

Power down in places.

111 lines are down

We are rocking and shaking and have been the last hour.

I'm on high ground and we're not on the east coast.

Thrillhouse

Gonna be another Earthquake come June as well. (Lions tour).

7.4 isn't that big on the scheme of things, the Kiwi's will be fine, proper tough bunch

DXBtoDOH

Tough bunch yes. Great country. Hope everyone is well.

jam25mack

Are you mental? 7.4 is a proper quake! Maybe worth looking into how the Richter scale works.... i.e the fact that its logarithmic.

My mate lives in C'Church and was saying his office is one of the new 'sprung' foundation jobbies. Said its be swaying all day.

TBH though if you don't want earthquakes then don't choose to live on the ring of fire.

BEVS

Ha! This area was known as the 'safe zone'. No known real fault lines until it happened that is.

Yup. It has been quaking continuously. Worst was last night though. Back to back double quakes of a different nature so it seems.

My hope has to be that there are no more quakes and it dies down to aftershocks.

Irishbeekeeper

I was in Islamabad for the huge 7.6 and then rushed north to Kashmir the same morning and witnessed death and carnage like I never want to see again. Trust me, 7.4 will be very very scary. I think there was another one, 7.5 this time, last night at the same location?
Just make sure no one is indoors for any reason, buildings will be fragile and can fall even after a few days without showing any signs that they will.
Camping equipment donations would go a long way in helping them out for now.

BEVS

I know
We moved our grab bags and re-sorted our kit in between quakes.
Will spend another night on the ground floor right by the door to outside.

Inselaffen

it's interesting being 20-30 floors up when Dubai feels the effect of a shake over in Iran!

jam25mack

Ironically you are relatively safe in a 1-2 story or a 5+ story building. Generally the higher the better, especially if they have been built in the last 10yrs. The physics of earthquakes are such that the wavelength of a quake closely match that of 3-4 story buildings. Add to that the fact that the reinforcement for buildings of this height are far less then they really are the place not to be in the event of a quake.

As for Dubai, for an essentially aseismic region (most of the quake emanating from the Zargous fault in Iran or Pakistan) and the crazily stringent seismic design codes you are more than safe here. There are a couple over in the Hajar mountains, generally higher up but they are not really much to worry about.

jam25mack

Safe zone.... in the ring of fire....

I'm not sure how extensive the geological mapping is for NZ but i'm thinking that due to the relatively small population, concentrated areas of development and generally rugged / inaccessible and highly vegetated nature it wouldn't be too exhaustive compared with other countries. I assuming that for instance it's nowhere near as highly detailed in terms of mapping as the UK, however, the UK is a bit of anomaly in that sense.

Pongo

Haven't a couple of volcanoes recently become active in Chile?

Bahtatboy

In theory. The problem is that earthquakes make buildings move in different way. Yes, technology is improving design, but beyond certain limits (certain for a particular building), nothing works. I used to live in Kobe (where the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 was centred), and it was deadly fascinating to see streets with old and new buildings adjacent to each other, and in some cases the new building had collapsed while the old one survived, and in other cases the opposite.

Bahtatsprog No 1 is in Wellington at the moment. She was on the 4th floor of a modern building, less than 100m from the harbour; the quake wasn't so strong in Wellington, but it was a nervous few hours (for me: she went backto bed) yesterday after she decided to stay put and not evacuate. Her hire car was right by the sea so too dangerous to get, and there seemed to be not so much information about when or if a tsunami would hit.

jam25mack

That's what I mean, its all abut the P&S wavelengths of a quake. Mostly though large building can take this into account due to the wavelength of the quake not being that close to the critical wavelength of the building plus cash being available to allow to the installation of active dampening systems (counterweights, sprung foundations etc). Also, the amount of engineering design that goes into a big building is a lot more complex. Smaller buildings on the other hand are closer to matching the critical wavelength, its not economically viable to install active systems and generally the engineering is a lot simpler.

Yes and no. If you design to the correct standards for the location then the building should survive up to a certain magnitude. Obviously if its a 8.5+ then your in the lap of the gods.