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BarbBinder wrote:
Wow. I'm just seeing this now, Trevor. Thank you for the updates. What a mess. If you and Chris want a place to hang out and ski in Colorado until things return to normal (which seems questionable after reading your stories), we have room.
Hah! Sounds way too cold Barb but thanks for the offer. 
My Chris is off to the UK (third time this year) on Friday to help her parents move house, and I am staying here supposedly to tidy things up ready for a visit by my brother in January — he timed that well!
In the last update I said things were quietening down, but I forgot to touch wood. A 5.7 aftershock early this morning, has closed the Inland road again, before it was even fully open, and bought more houses down. We expect big aftershocks for at least three to six months after the initial big one.
This story is reminiscent of Cornish shipwrecks a hundred years ago, with a stranded train's cargo of Moët Champagne looted by locals.
But the story that has intrigued me came from friends who live in Ward, which is much closer to the epicenter than us. They had a team of scientists from GNS visit yesterday, and held a meeting in the community hall where they could hardly contain their excitement at the scale of the earth movement. The figures are definitely jaw dropping though. Large areas of inshore lifted by up to six metres! That's a shade under 20 feet. The fault apparently ruptured at a speed of 3 kilometres per second, which I am still thinking they must have misplaced a decimal point a figure or two, because that works out to >6000mph. The scientists told the Ward people that the good news is that they didn't need to worry so much about future tsunami with this new barrier to take the energy out of a big wave.
The animated graphic at the top of THIS PAGE​ has some interesting facts and comparisons, like that the recent 7.8 quake released more energy than all the quakes in NZ over the previous six years. At the same time, the nature of this quake saved us from greater damage because its vertical acceleration was only 1.2g, whereas the highly destructive quake in Christchurch in February 2011 had a vertical acceleration of 2.2g. I can remember reading back then that the vertical acceleration of the Christchurch quake was unusually large.
A wee reminder of why some buildings fall down, but most NZ houses stay together, is that we build residential homes with wood frames with lightweight sheet metal roofs. This means we need tiny joists and struts compared to the UK, for instance, where the concrete tiles require much heavier support systems. A typical two story UK house with concrete roof tiles would almost certainly have collapsed if situated in my street during the 7.8 quake. This also means that grand old buildings solidly built with stone, do not fare well. The Christchurch cathedral being an obvious example.
But six years on, I'd guess that 50% of the Christchurch city centre is still consists of a lot of open spaces. A lot of these buildings have been built since their big quake.
Plus, my theory is that in the U.S. it was buried under the election and transition coverage. I'm trying hard to ignore all election-related stories, and maybe that's why I'm missing other significant events. 
We get plenty of Donald Trump stories here. The boat tragedy Terri mention was our second worst, and sadly, it was completely avoidable because they had no business going out in that weather. If you know about crossing bars into natural harbours, you'll understand what happened. A big swell hits the much shallower water and creates big waves, so you have to keep enough speed to maintain steerage, because if you get square on, your boat will be swamped and capsized. That's what happened. I had to sell my boat after I broke my back a few years back, but I would have been to chicken to cross a west coast bar with it.
This capsize happened at our most notorious bar in Greymouth three years ago. Only one person drowned that time.
The earthquake story will go on for months and months now. They opened the Inland road to Kaikoura to the public briefly, but they won't let the milk tankers through, and with 1000 odd dairy cows trapped in the cut off zone, the farmers are having to milk (the cows dry up if not milked regularly) and throw the mil away. You can imagine this is making the farmers very unhappy.
The Kaikoura tourist industry is basically buggered for the rest of this season, even if the tourist could get there. It's going to take six months to dredge the harbour so the whale watch and fishing boats can get out, and the main launch ramp will need extending because it was lifted two metres out of the water.
They have banned cray fishing for the time being while they assess stocks because so many died when being lifted out of the water and left high and dry. I think that will work out OK, because the fishing is usually done off shore, so there will be plenty out there.
One worry was that the whales wouldn't return, but that seems to have worked out because they have been spotted near the deep trench that draws them to Kaikoura to feed. Not that the whale watch boats can get out to them.
Meanwhile, they have started to demolish the unsafe buildings in Wellington. That's were the real financial cost has been, and it has caused what was, pre-quake, a very buoyant property market. That hasn't happened in Marlborough yet thank goodness.
This map shows buildings with significant damage from the quake in Wellington. It looks bad, and expensive, but is nothing compared to the Christchurch quake in 2011. They are calling both the Christchurch 2011 and our recent 7.8 quakes thousand year events. That is a worrying statistic.
Nancy we have something here called EQC which is a free insurance for earthquake damage to residential property. It is not all inclusive, and it took years for a lot of people to get satisfaction after the 2011 Christchurch quake. In fact that has all blown up again because a lot of the repairs that were done, have already failed. They were so desperate for skilled builders back then, that corners were cut, and liberties definitely taken. There are some terrible people in this world!
Our current position right now is all about infrastructure. With the main north south road closed for probably upwards of two years, traffic on the alternative route has more than trebled, and things are already going wrong. Traffic was at a standstill for hours on Saturday when the tar seal was ripped off a bridge, and emergency repairs had to be done.
When I moved to NZ 12 years ago, I used this road to get from Marlborough to the West coast, and I'd see less than thirty other vehicles during the entire journey. That's coast to coast, and there are only three such routes in the South Island. The road is now dealing with 12
vehicles, 400 of which are heavy trucks. Nothing compared to the UK's M1 / M6 motorways, or main US Interstates, but our little roads are not built for it. This is not the bridge in question, but it is the same road, and very close to it. We have a lot of these One-Way-Bridges and they are usually not a problem because of the lack of traffic.
Jane, I don't really know about JK's decision to quit. It came as a massive shock to us all, and while I do not share his political views, he didn't do a bad job. His explanation is that he was not going to stand again, and he thought it unfair to bail out and leave his party in the lurch right before the next election. The government didn't bat an eyelid at the Kaikoura quake, as they were so in surplus, they did not feel worried about the couple of billion it will cost to sort out the damage from the latest big quake. Least ways that's what they are saying. The big joke doing the rounds after Christchurch in 2011, was if we had another big one then New Zealand would become wholly owned by China! We definitely have a substantial debt with China, but they don't seem to worried about that either.
Life goes on, the shops have no shortages and we can still fly to Kaikoura and Christchurch. There are beautiful alternate routes for the tourists that don't include the now busy SH63, but the bottom line is that quite a lot of people are basically buggered. Only two people died though, so we are thankful for that (Touch wood — A BIG aftershock nearly threw me out of bed yesterday. Thank goodness my wife is in the UK).
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