![]() ![]() Kanoa Koyanagi, a geophysicist at the centre, said the quake was borderline for issuing an alert. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii estimates the quake at a magnitude 7.4 and says it doesn't believe there's a tsunami threat. Gledhill wants the site monitored 24 hours a day and appears to be gaining support for that. "We have to wake people and get them out of bed to look at complex data and make serious calls very quickly," he said. He said those stations became overloaded and did not work properly during the severe quake. GeoNet director Ken Gledhill said that estimate was a result of a glitch in their system, in which the monitoring stations closest to the quake were relied upon too heavily. The Waiau Lodge Hotel, in Waiau, 120 kilometres north of Christchurch, was damaged by the quake. She downgrades the quake to a magnitude 6.6, and upgrades the site's confidence in its estimate. The duty officer is now awake and reviews the data. GeoNet's automatic estimates of the quake have risen to magnitude 7.5. As ceiling tiles fall around them, operators think they've activated a backup system, but in their haste to leave have failed to do so. The nation's emergency call number, 111, fails after operators evacuate their building in the capital, Wellington. A magnitude 7.8 might signal it's time to run for higher ground. For some quake-hardened New Zealanders, a magnitude 6.5 might signal it's time to get some more sleep. Quakes are measured on an exponential scale, and this one would prove to be 20 times larger and 89 times more powerful than that. GeoNet generates its first computer estimate for the quake: magnitude 6.5. Although earthquakes pose a huge threat to New Zealand, the GeoNet site is not monitored around the clock. The duty officer for the country's official earthquake warning site is asleep. It rumbles for 2 1/2 minutes, triggering six separate faults that begin on land and continue out to sea. Here's what happened, minute by minute, after the quake hit early Monday, with details on how officials intend to improve:Ī magnitude-7.8 earthquake strikes New Zealand near the coastal town of Kaikoura. But some consider it was more by luck this time than by good planning. The nation was spared the devastation of five years ago when 185 people were killed in the Christchurch earthquake. The earthquake destroyed this structure, killing resident Louis Edgar near Kaikoura, New Zealand. ![]()
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