Christchurch got two fairly large quakes yesterday, a 5.8 and then 80 minutes later a 6.0, followed up by multiple aftershocks over 4.0.

Luckily nobody was killed and less than a handful of people hurt, but it'll have a big impact on people as the aftershocks from the big one were fading away (they've had several thousand in the last year). It's estimated that the city will lose over 10% of it's population as people just can not face living in the area.

Ironically the area will go through a huge construction boom with billions of dollars to be spent replacing damaged infrastructure but this can not start until the aftershocks have stopped. Each time there are quakes like this it will push the start of the rebuild back three months or so.

However don't get the idea that NZ as a whole is a disaster zone. The problems are only in one small area of the country. New Zealand is one amazing place to live in or to visit.

I'm in Auckland, which is towards the top of the North Island and I currently work in Wellington, with is at the bottom of the North Island. Christchurch is on the South Island, about half way down.

The quakes from yesterday were felt in Wellington. Whilst it isn't that unusual to feel quakes when down there, you always hope that it's a local one and not another big Christchurch one as if it can be felt there then it'll be a huge one there.

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To give you an idea of the scale, it's about 300 miles between Auckland and Wellington.

Of the people with CH I know of here in NZ, they are all in the North Island.

NZ is very active with volcanoes and earthquakes. We've several active volcanoes and get thousands of earthquakes a year, however the vast majority of quakes are never noticed by humans.

You can see the earthquake drum for the Christchurch area at Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or

The image below is refreshed every few minutes, so depending on when you look you may see either nothing much or possibly multiple earthquakes (as there is when I posted it). The ones with red will be noticeable by people.

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