New Zealand earthquake: Why Taumarunui dodged the earthquake only 25km away

Tuesday, 30 October 2018

It came down to what side of the road you were on for a holidaying Australian couple, when Tuesday's quake hit.

The magnitude-6.2 earthquake stuck at 3.13pm but was widely missed in Taumarunui - despite the epicentre being only 25 kilometres away.

John and Gail Slijkhuis drove from New Plymouth on the SH43 Forgotten World Highway past the epicentre shortly before the quake struck.

They were at a Taumarunui cafe at the time but were oblivious to the tremors.

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'That's where, apparently, the people on the other side of the road felt the earthquake. We didn't,' said John Slijkhuis.

'All of a sudden the lady opposite us exclaimed: 'Did you feel that?'

'We had an earthquake and it was about 6.2 magnitude. She looked at us and we were incredulous. We didn't realise there was an earthquake.'

He said Australia rarely experiences earthquakes and it's made their holiday more interesting.

'Being from where we are we're probably not sensitive enough.'

Ruapehu District Council mayor Don Cameron was in his office just off the main street of Taumarunui when the quake struck, and he wasn't the only one in the central North Island town that didn't feel it.

A worker at Forgotten World Adventures, a tourism operator based in Taumarunui, said no-one had felt it in their office, and Civil Defence said there were no reports of damage in Taumarunui - in fact, they didn't even feel it themselves.

Cameron said there were no reports of damage in the town. 'Mind you, I've got nothing in the office that would rock,' he said.

The quake seemed to have been more keenly felt further away in places like Whanganui. 'It's quite weird.'

In Whangamomona, New Zealand's only self-proclaimed republic and the closest township to Taumarunui, it was business as usual following the 6.2 magnitude quake.

Republic president John Herlihy enjoyed his usual afternoon beer at the Whangamomona Hotel on Thursday, but it wasn't in celebration of surviving the earthquake - he hadn't felt it.

In fact, he only knew it had struck near his Forgotten World Highway town when he got a call from his son in the South Island town of Rangiora asking if he was OK.

'I was driving back to the house, I didn't feel a thing,' Herlihy said.

However, Roasty, the resident hotel lamb felt it, and was still skittish on Thursday evening as a result, hotel manager Anita Williams said.

Williams was at the top of a ladder pulling wallpaper off in a building next door when the earthquake hit and she thought it was Roasty walking into the ladder's legs, making her uneasy.

'I just thought I had slippery feet.'

It wasn't until she came back to the hotel and spoke to hotel worker Kevin Barrow who said he'd felt something.

'He said he saw the blackboard wobbling,' Williams said.

'It moved, the building definitely moved.'

Ruapehu District Council civil defence co-ordinator and chief executive Clive Manley said while the quake was sizeable, Taumarunui got off lightly.

'We did phone around a lot of our community but there was absolutely no reports of any damage anywhere,' Manley said.

'It's fair to say you had to really concentrate to feel it. You felt it a little it in your stomach. We've got a sort of a flagpole in chambers, which is where I was, and you could just see it move very slightly.'

No one has been reported injured as a result of the quake, he said.

'We're grateful, obviously, that no one was injured or damaged but at the same a bit amused at the sheer interest right across the country.'

'I've had friends phoning up asking if we're alright, fellow CEOs phoning to see if there is anything they could do to help so there is a wonderful community of caring in New Zealand which is great but in this case there is nothing to worry about.'

Taumarunui resident Rachelle Kerkhof said: 'Not much to report. First, we knew of it was my Poppa calling to check we were OK.'

Sophie Barnes lives about 15km from the quake epicentre and barely felt a thing, she said.

'We basically felt nothing here and we are not far away from it at all,' Barnes said.

'I was sat in the lounge and felt a little wobble and said 'what's that?' and I looked up at the lights and saw them swinging slightly but that's the only thing I could see to tell that we'd had an earthquake.'

A magnitude-6.2 earthquake has hit central New Zealand, with thousands of kiwis feeling the quake.

The Forgotten World Adventures worker, who did not want to be named, said: 'Life has gone on.'

Power was still on in the town, there had been no fire siren and the internet was still working.

An earthquake hits the central North Island.

It was strange Wellington appeared to be worse affected, she said.

Ruapehu District Council mayor Don Cameron said he was in his office just off the main street of Taumarunui when the 6.2M quake struck. He didn't feel it.

The magnitude-6.2 quake was widely felt across the New Zealand, expecially the North Island, on Tuesday afternoon.

The epicentre of the earthquake which affected New Zealand on Tuesday afternoon was 25km south-west of Taumarunui and 207km deep, but many people in the town are reporting that they didn't feel a thing.

Whangamomona Hotel worker Kevin Barrow said the quake was very mild in the tiny town, which is about 90km south of Taumarunui.

'It's weird, it must have travelled in a narrow direction, it was mild here. A few paintings on the wall were jiggling around but that was it.'

A worker at the Ohura Cosmopolitan Club said the quake was 'nothing major'. There was a bit of a shake for a little while, but nothing out of the ordinary, she said. The club would carrying on as normal tonight, she said.

WHY IT WASN'T FELT

Seismologist Dr John Ristau said while the epicentre was close to Taumarunui, the nature of deep quakes meant their effects spread far more widely, he said.

'So if you look at the 'felt reports' around that epicentre, there's hardly any. Instead they are farther away and most of them were in Wellington and Christchurch.

'In these deep quakes, it takes a while for all the energy released to get up to the surface. By the time it does, it has already spread a fair distance from the quake's location.

'You often get a lot more felt reports out to the east, because the subducting plate is very effective at getting the energy up to the surface. It's a bit like if you hold your ear up to a long piece of wood and someone scratches it right at the other end - you can hear that like it's right in your ear.'

The depth was 'not that unusual' for a moderate to large quake in that area.

'Under the central and western part of the North Island, the plates are subducting down and are deep. Below Taranaki they [quakes] can even be 500 to 600km deep.'