Geo-boffins say 'quake lifted bits of New Zealand by 8 metres, moved at 3km/second New Zealand's geoscience agency GNS Science has released videos showing the fault lines that ruptured during the recent earthquakes that moved the nation two metres north. The Kaikoura earthquake struck on November 14th, 2016, and caused extensive damage on New Zealand's South Island. Two people died as a result of the …
It is my understanding that property right laws in New Zealand already cover what happens in the case where the land changes sizes. If I remember the conversation correctly, it is that old minor natural boundaries like fence lines or tree lines that move are the new boundary but the land owner could be out of luck if the boundary is a river or road next to a coast. I was told this by someone working for their geo sciences department more than a decade ago. He mentioned that part of the south end of the North Island managed to move 0.6 of a meter in less than 3 months without anything other that the Differential GPS tracking sites indicating the relocation.
Do you get to keep the 8m of your land that has jumped into what was (or still is?) your neighbour's property?
I was wondering the same when seeing some of that footage last night. Afraid I am quite clueless on such issues.
And what of items on the property? Ok so by using strict co-ordinates most people have the same land area, but that's my grass on the other side of the line now, my money went into the fertilizer etc that went on the ground, my cattle (or sheep if you're an ozzie) shat on it contributing to the makeup of the content of the grass.
Who can you go to to arrange a license for the use of such IP?
Joking aside, modern imagery is awesome. Just a couple of weeks later and thanks to drones and satellites we know how comprehensively fucked the country is, tweets almost outpacing seismic waves. A great time for lovers of disaster porn to be alive (and less facetiously for all those involved too: Only two deaths from this series of quakes is a tribute to both building codes and blind dumb luck)
You're talking about a country with more land area than the UK, and one-fifteenth of the population. And three-quarters of that one-fifteenth are in the North Island, the closest point of which is at least 100km from the epicentre.
And it's summer, although it has been raining quite a bit.
So the low casualties, while gratifying, aren't that surprising. And calling the country "comprehensively fucked" would be like calling the UK "comprehensively fucked" if Brighton Pier collapsed. (I mean, it is fairly fucked, but the earthquake is a relatively small part of that.)
I'm feeling downright down because the past few years have dinged some "certainties" of my youth: Wellington's what you really need to worry about, the backbone of the Alps is pretty much rubble, East Cape is bad news, and Christchurch is The Garden City. And now we've learnt that actually the entire east coast is a mess of interlocking faults including plenty of unknown ones such as the Darfield one that trashed Christchurch as an aftershock. Costs guesstimated around $40B for the earlier ones, the Kaikoura addition looking to keep the main road north closed for months and with costs guesstimated $2-4B. With the prospect of plenty more fun to come, perhaps further to the north, i.e. closer to Welly, if indeed strain is transferring along the plate boundary (or maybe not, or not in our lifetimes - only certainty about quakes is that each one provides a wealth of new data for geologists) So that's my despondency fuel - this past decade has featured surprise upon surprise and not many of them the nicer sort.
...excepting that loss of life figure: sure it's sparsely populated, but this was a quake series that led to modern buildings in building-code-conscious Wellington being so badly damaged that they're being demolished, residents evacuated for weeks, etc. And all that's 150km from the epicentres; surprising indeed.
So the low casualties, while gratifying, aren't that surprising. And calling the country "comprehensively fucked" would be like calling the UK "comprehensively fucked" if Brighton Pier collapsed. (I mean, it is fairly fucked, but the earthquake is a relatively small part of that.)
Mongo said it well. Wellington (our capital) has several buildings in it and the outlying suburbs being demolished, or quite badly damaged. Some are only a few years old, supposedly built to very high (on an international scale) earthquake standards. "Several" is in the hundreds, with I think thousands currently out of work and out of homes. Not all businesses can pay for the wages for their staff while they can't get into their buildings, and the government isn't able to afford to compensate/help out all firms (while simultaneously refusing aid from overseas! (last I heard) ).
While helping with out high unemployment, the costs of these quakes (both the last couple of weeks and the Christchurch ones) will be felt by us for a long time to come. And if the Kaikoura quakes follow the pattern from Christchurch and/or, as Mongo mentions, they hit Wellington which is kinda next on the list (we had a lot around Seddon/in the Cook Straight a year or two back), then we will see another massive lot of damage with subsequent loss of life, homes and businesses. If any generate a significant tsunami...
So yes, we are rather close to the region of "fucked".
"forgive us a story comprised of"
COMPOSED OF, please. Comprise is a synonym of include. A story could not be "included of", now, could it?
The Kiwis suffered enough from this earthquake. Don't compound their torment with shaky grammar.
Whilst of comedic value, Ryanair might only be the national express of the sky but I paid the same this year (for 2017 summer) as i did for the last 4 years to go to gran canaria. Their prices have remained pretty much the same (book early, dont care about boarding or seat booking extras and take 1 small case).
Their flights from prestwick are on time and i expect them to be spartan. The only extra i pay is the CC charge for section 75.....
Danny14, I know this is off-topic, but had to reply. You do realize that there are many twats out there that expect to be treated like royalty on a 30 minute flight, get full service and a 3 course dinner, and bring 50kg of luggage to their long-weekend stay in <insert city>, for their $30 ticket round-trip.
Treat the damn flight as your local bus ride FFS. You expect the ticket inspector to bring your lunch when he comes to your seat?
You do realize that there are many twats out there that expect to be treated like royalty on a 30 minute flight...While true, and I know less than nothing about Ryanair, I do know about the Australian equivalent: Tigerline. Friends were returned to Geelong rather than Tullamarine because inconvenient. The taxi fares home and then to Tullamarine airport the following morning more than ate up any cost savings made by flying Tigerline rather than Qantas or Virgin.
I have learnt over time to fly on Tuesday or Wednesday mid-mornings. The cost savings are not great; accommodation tends to be the biggie. Never travel on Fridays, Sundays or Mondays unless it's Christmas Day or New Year's.
Don't get me started on the twats who fly on budget airlines... I always get stuck behind the ones in knee-high lace up boots who have failed to notice everyone before them has been asked to remove footware.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person with the common sense to unlace shoes whilst queuing and tuck the laces inside for a quick remove... Not to mention removing my belt and placing everything from my trouser pockets in my coat pockets, bar my phone, for a quick remove and dump into the trays.
I'm still seeing people having litre bottles of water removed from them at security, and they're still looking perplexed (despite walking past two dozen signs whilst queuing).
Wouldn't it be great if everyone was as worldly wise and experienced at flying as you eh, Steve?
Or so innocent of shopping malls etc that they take time to stop and read the adverts in case there's something important/interesting.
(Steve, that's the issue for a lot of people - we spend so long in places with excessive advertising banners/posters that signs in airports etc appear as background noise, no we do not see the signs because our culture has trained us to ignore such things!)
" I always get stuck behind the ones in knee-high lace up boots who have failed to notice everyone before them has been asked to remove footware."
this is not the only place this happens:
Checkout queue - some people are surprised they have to pay , or pack.
Cash machines - some people think its ok to do a weeks banking
Buttie shop - some people dont realise they can decide before its their turn
Traffic lights - some people dont realise the cars behind want to get across b4 red too
Escalators - we havent all got the time to stand around, cos we're too fat to climb
Debit payments - If the retail establishment you are in is small , and processes card payments via 52k modem , dont pay for your 99p bottle of springwater on a card just cos you cant be arsed carrying money.
For some reason the Reg Videos still don't ply in my Firefox, here's stuff on YouTube:
Papatea Fault and Raised Coast - So long and thanks for all the fish!
Farm track ruptured by fault (if a cow has the disadvantage of being on the fault line at time zero, does she get catapulted, Monty Python style?)
House displaced by fault rupture with Will Ries doing SCIENCE!
Drone video of the Kekerengu Fault rupture.
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mizsfXP_I1w RUPTLY filming from a helo (now that WaPo has declared that RUPLY is a Putin's Propaganda Outlet out to Influence American Voters, maybe one should not watch this - still, those tunnels look unsafe!)
I don't think those numbers can be right. 3km per second is 10800km/h. Assuming that we're accelerating from rest to 3km/s in 4m, then stopping again in another 4m giving an average speed of 1.5km/s, so 0 to 3km/s in 1/375 of a second, or 1125000m/s/s which is 114679 G. Those fish would be fish paste.
I don't think the 3km/s is the rate at which the rocks move during the quake - it's the rate at which the movement of the rocks propagates along the fault line (apologies, probably not the right technical terms, but hopefully you get the idea). So the earthquake occurs now, a second later it's happening 3km away.
The Japanese were working on a system using movement detectors in mobile phones to identify a quake happening at point A and broadcasting a warning a few seconds before it arrives (presumably 100 km or so away) at point B.
The Japanese were working on a system using movement detectors in mobile phones to identify a quake happening at point A and broadcasting a warning a few seconds before it arrives (presumably 100 km or so away) at point B.
There are two ways to do it. (1) The two types of waves generated by earthquakes -- P and S waves -- propagate at different speeds. The fast waves will arrive 150km away from the epicentre long enough before the slow but destructive shaking waves, giving long enough for nuclear reactors to SCRAM, lifts to go and sulk in the basement, etc.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130927-earthquake-early-warning-system-earth-science/
(2) light speed, even in copper or glass fibre, is a faster than seismic waves, as Mr Monroe observed: https://xkcd.com/723/
a quake happening at point A and broadcasting a warning a few seconds before it arrives (presumably 100 km or so away) at point B.
A few seconds warning. So what's the actionable message?
"Prepare to scream theatrically if you are being filmed"
"If your are religious, pray quickly"
"If you are not religious, now might be the time to reconsider"
"Gaia is angry"
"Stitch this!
"I don't think those numbers can be right"
Hypersonic fish is one thing but an entire house! Imagine the kinetic energy of a house. I don't think it is quite that simple. The house looks like the trick where a magician yanks the tablecloth and everything stays on the table due to inertia. Quite a big table and very impressive that the house is in pretty good shape given that the ground under most of it shuffled to the right rather quickly.
<doffs hat to Kiwi builders>
hear, hear!
3 Km/second just won't do for this kind of mass.
Feels like the last scene of Jurassic Park, can't shake that size head IRL without it blowing apart. That was the only suspension-of-disbelief for me, and I felt bad afterwards. so bad I still remeber it all this many years later. oh, a headache.
I watched the videos (and others that are out there on Youtube) and after seeing them and reading the article on the Millennium Tower in San Francisco, I'm happy not to be living in San Francisco or points south.
The author of this piece is right... words alone cannot convey what happened.
This post has been deleted by its author
Also truly amazing to me is how few causalities Chile gets when they have megathrust 8.0+ (up to 9.5) every few decades it seems (worst of which can last 10 minutes, yikes). Then you have Haiti absolutely devastated by a much smaller 7.0 on a strike slip fault. Geography and standard of living (especially strength of rule of law in enforcing building codes) matter a whole lot I am guessing.
So much of earthquake damage and casualties comes down to construction techniques. In Chile, they use a lot of wood-framed stucco and plaster, where the frame flexes and maybe some stucco cracks or plaster flakes off. In Haiti, the local forests have been cut down decades ago for firewood, and non-shanty buildings are made of adobe, masonry and usually-not-correctly-reinforced concrete. That stuff shakes apart pretty quickly, then collapses on everyone inside--call the rescue team and the morgue, in that order.
New British immigrants who come to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where I am always wonder why the houses are made of wood or wood and stucco. They usually start off thinking it is because Americans like to build things cheap and/or because of a societal indifference to building centuries-old landmarks that British are used to. But Brits who have lived in California for awhile come to realize that the real reason is to prevent your home collapsing on you during quakes.
The big danger in America is the New Madrid fault complex along the mid-Mississippi River. That last let go in the first decade of the 19th century, when very few people lived out there and those that did lived in log and wood buildings. A new quake like that one would be a true disaster, as the last I heard the area from St. Louis to Memphis is full of brick and unreinforced concrete construction and has made little progress in updating seismic building codes
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