Strong earthquake rocks New Zealand’s South Island

BBC News
Friday, September 3, 2010

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck off New Zealand’s South Island, the US Geological Survey has said.

The epicentre was 55km (35 miles) north-west of Christchurch, at a depth of 12 km (7.5 miles), it added.

Police reported widespread minor damage and local power cuts. Christchurch is New Zealand’s second largest city with a population of about 386,000, but no casualties have yet been reported.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said there was a risk of a local tsunami.

New Zealand lies at the southern end of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, and above an area of the Earth’s crust where the Pacific Plate converges with the Indo-Australian Plate.

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New Zealand earthquake rips a new fault line across the world… moving one side of the

Daily Mail
Sunday, September 5, 2010

New Zealand’s powerful earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted railway lines around Christchurch ripped a new 11ft wide fault line in the earth’s surface, a geologist said today.

Canterbury University geology professor Mark Quigley said what ‘looks to us that it could be a new fault’ had ripped across the earth and pushed some surface areas up.

The quake was caused by the continuing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, said Prof Quigley, who is leading a team trying to pin down the temblor’s source.

‘One side of the earth has lurched to the right… up to 11 feet and in some places been thrust up,’ he told National Radio.

‘The long linear fracture on the earth’s surface does things like break apart houses, break apart roads. We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.’

At least 500 buildings, including 90 properties, were designated as destroyed in the 7.1-magnitude quake that struck on Friday near the South Island city of 400,000 people. Most other buildings sustained only minor damage.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...d--moving-earth-11ft-right.html#ixzz0yeOycEHv

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