12/11/2023 0 Comments New zealand quake![]() ![]() Though Van Dissen works for GNS Science and Little for Victoria University, they’ve been best friends since they met while making a similar trench on the Awatere Fault two decades ago, sharing a taste for beer and music around the campfire at the end of a day’s work (Van Dissen on guitar, Little on harmonica). They cut down through the earth in a series of steps, taking soil samples from the walls, until they were four metres below the surface in a muddy hole at the heart of the fault. Their team spent several weeks in the field, tracing the fault’s story into the past. Last summer, earthquake geologists Russ Van Dissen and Tim Little dug a 15-metre-long trench across a paddock on North Canterbury’s Kekerengu Fault, hoping to answer a question that had long eluded scientists: how often did it rupture, and how far did it slide when it did? They suspected it was one of the fastest-moving faults in the country, and new dating techniques gave them a chance to find out for sure. “Instead of it being Russian roulette, you can wear a helmet.” “To be able to predict an earthquake you’d need to know a whole lot more than we do now about how these processes work.” So is anywhere in New Zealand safe? Not really, he says, but there are things everyone can do to prepare. Could we have seen it coming? Science is still a long way from being able to forecast earthquakes, says GNS earthquake geologist Russ Van Dissen. Roads and hillsides subsided without warning in those few minutes in the middle of the night. Search our catalogue for information about the Wellington and Wairarapa Earthquake.Written by Kate Evans Photographed by Rob Suisted.New Zealand tragedies: earthquakes, Anna Rogers, Wellington, 1996.Caught in the crunch: earthquakes and volcanoes in New Zealand, Rebecca Ansell, Auckland, 1996.When Wellington was rebuilt the main commercial buildings in the city were built of brick because of the fire risk of a wooden building, but most of the homes were rebuilt in timber. It was realised that the wooden buildings built after the 1848 earthquake had stood up to the shaking better than other constructions. Large landslips had swept down the sides of the Rimutaka Ranges, and there were gaping fissures (cracks) in the Wairarapa Plain, some up to 5 metres deep. They were later fully drained and the reclaimed land was built on. Swamps partly dried out as a result of the quake. A result of this newly-raised land was that the shipping basin planned for the city was abandoned and the land was used for a cricket ground instead - the Basin Reserve. The earthquake raised the Wellington coastline by up to 1.5 metres. How many died?įour people died (one in Wellington, three in the Wairarapa). The Government Offices, which housed the Wellington Provincial Government, were completely demolished. In the harbour, the water washed in and out in huge waves every twenty minutes by up to several metres, flooding some of the houses on the beach front. In the Wairarapa three people died when a house collapsed on them. This was the only death in Wellington from the earthquake. One was a two-storey hotel which collapsed, killing the owner. Approximately four-fifths of the chimneys in Wellington fell down.īrick houses destroyed in the 1848 quake had been replaced by timber houses, but there were still some brick buildings which suffered damage in 1855. The damage from the earthquake was extensive with timber houses as well as brick buildings collapsing. In 1855 Wellington had a population of approximately 6,000 people. Three people had died when a wall collapsed onto them. It had been followed by several aftershocks, causing severe damage in Wellington. That earthquake had been centred in the Wairau Valley, in Marlborough, and had measured 7.1 on the Richter scale. The first large earthquake that they had felt had taken place on 16 October 1848, during a strong gale and heavy rain. This earthquake was the second major earthquake that Wellington settlers had experienced. The violent shake was felt as far away as Canterbury. The earthquake measured 8.2 on the Richter scale and was centred in the south-west Wairarapa along the Wairarapa Fault, about 25 kilometres from Wellington. ![]() ![]() The largest recorded earthquake to have hit New Zealand rocked Wellington and the Wairarapa at 9:11pm, on 23 January 1855. The earthquake was one of the main reasons why houses in Wellington were mostly rebuilt in timber rather than brick. Four people were killed and the landscape of the Wellington region was changed significantly. At 9:11pm, on 23 January 1855, the southern part of the North Island was struck by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in New Zealand. ![]()
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