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#eqnz — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #eqnz, aggregated by home.social.

  1. CW: NZPol Schools

    "When the Ministry of Education found out its Wellington headquarters met only 25% of the building standards, they were very quick to move staff to a new building. The ministry has known about our likely earthquake rating since at least 2020. That’s four years during which they could’ve done something, but instead they sat in silence. "

    ... so how many other schools does the Ministry deem unsafe haven't they told...

    #NZPol #NZSchools #eqnz #MinEd

    thespinoff.co.nz/society/16-09

  2. We were woken up this morning at 5:39 am by the the first #earthquake #eqnz I have felt in a long time. Magnitude 5.1 near Te Aroha, about 60 km from where I am as the tui flies. See the details on #Geonet here:
    geonet.org.nz/earthquake/2023p
    It was widely felt around the upper North Island with over 20000 felt reports.

    By New Zealand standards this isn't a particularly tectonically active area, so it creates a bit of excitement. Today's earthquake was possibly due to movement on the Kerepehi Fault underneath the Hauraki Plains. Prehistoric movement on this fault has been studied (tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10) to estimate recurrence and size of potential damaging earthquakes (<5ka and Mw 5.5 to 7.0, so today's earthquake was approaching estimates).

    The danger in this part of NZ is a lot of older housing and infrastructure has little or no seismic design so even a 'moderate' earthquake could cause serious damage. And it could be the little things that cause major headaches. For instance, the house I am staying in was built in 1948 and the toilet is cemented into the downpipe. That fixed junction is a point of failure in serious shaking so a house may well survive a strong earthquake in good condition, but be unusable without a functioning toilet... (the building code since the 1970's specifies a flexible junction to avoid breakage). Fingers crossed that may be the last quake for a while!