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Post by LunarOrbit on Sept 3, 2010 14:51:46 GMT -4
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Post by Dead Hoosiers on Sept 4, 2010 3:08:31 GMT -4
rustylander is in christchurch. hope to hear from him when power comes up.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Sept 4, 2010 12:10:32 GMT -4
It sounds like there were no deaths and only a couple of people were seriously hurt. So that's good news.
I'm sure Rusty will have an interesting story to tell.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 4, 2010 20:33:05 GMT -4
7.1 actually, and while there were two serious injuries, there were no deaths. Speculation is that the repair bill is going to be in the billions because the streets and buildings are a mess.
edited because I exchanged a b for an m and knocked three zeros off the total bill.
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Post by gillianren on Sept 4, 2010 20:48:59 GMT -4
Honestly, most earthquake stories aren't terribly interesting. When I was a kid, we'd tell ours the next day at school, and they're really very similar. Some are fun, but by and large? Meh.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 4, 2010 21:01:42 GMT -4
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Post by Ginnie on Sept 4, 2010 23:28:09 GMT -4
Wow, that's quite a bit of damage! Its good to hear nobody was killed.
I googled "New Zealand Earthquake Relief" to see how many countries might be contributing.... almost all the responses were for New Zealand giving relief to other nations - I hope that what goes around, comes around and that New Zealand gets some help too.
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Post by gillianren on Sept 5, 2010 2:13:04 GMT -4
That could have been much worse. (Did anyone else notice the same car was in those pictures at least twice, as was one small child and a chunk of road?) Still, that doesn't mean it was a happy experience. I especially feel for the guy where it refers to its being his new home. Does insurance cover earthquake damage down there?
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 5, 2010 5:18:18 GMT -4
The NewZealand Earthquake Commission, which is a Government fund, covers the first $120,000. After that it is expected that Insurance will cover it. The catch is that the Commission will only pay out if you already have insurance, however a special fund has been set up for those that didn't or had insurance that didn't cover earthquake damage.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 5, 2010 5:34:53 GMT -4
That could have been much worse. (Did anyone else notice the same car was in those pictures at least twice, as was one small child and a chunk of road?) Still, that doesn't mean it was a happy experience. I especially feel for the guy where it refers to its being his new home. Does insurance cover earthquake damage down there? One of the things that you have to remember is that in New Zealand, especially since 1931, we have been very aware that we sit directly over a number of major faultlines. As a result all of our buildings built over the past 80 years have been built with this exact sort of earthquake in mind, and so unlike in Haiti, they were never going to collapse. However, just like the front of your car folds up in an accident so to take the inpact and protect the passangers, so too does the structure of our modern buildings. They basically snap at the joints and become fluid in the quake allow them to stand and stay standing afterwards. Of course this means that while they survived the quake, they are now seriously damaged in ways that are not visible, and all of that damage has to be repaired. The buildings that came down have tended to be the old historic brick and stone buildings, but the newer ones have suffered great damage too, it's just not so easy to show in a picture. As a comparison to Haiti, the Haiti EQ was a 7.0 and 13 km deep, 25 km from Port-au-Prince. The Christchurch EQ was a 7.1, 10km deep, 40km from Christchurch, so while it was further away, it was also shallower and 50% bigger than the Haiti one. The end difference was the engineering.
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Post by PeterB on Sept 5, 2010 8:34:33 GMT -4
As a comparison to Haiti, the Haiti EQ was a 7.0 and 13 km deep, 25 km from Port-au-Prince. The Christchurch EQ was a 7.1, 10km deep, 40km from Christchurch, so while it was further away, it was also shallower and 50% bigger than the Haiti one. The end difference was the engineering. Um, my calculations suggest the increase from mag 7.0 to mag 7.1 is only about 25%, not 50%.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 5, 2010 10:01:18 GMT -4
I was rounding based on wiki, they have a 7.0 as 2 PJ and a 7.1 at 2.82 PJ
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Post by gillianren on Sept 5, 2010 14:59:28 GMT -4
After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the city lowered earthquake building standards so that the city would look great for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition planned for 1915. They were encouraging investment in the city for it, and people wouldn't invest in a city they thought was going to shake down and burn up. It's why the damage for Loma Prieta was as major as it was and why the next one the size of 1906 will be very bad indeed.
I also happen to know that four of the dorms of my alma mater are designed to pancake. Thin walls and thick floors. In theory, that's great; less loss of life if only one falls over than if one falls into another and knocks it over as well. In practice, well, I was in the dorms during the Nisqually earthquake with that knowledge in my head. I was quite sure it wasn't going to be in my head much longer.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 5, 2010 18:37:26 GMT -4
After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the city lowered earthquake building standards so that the city would look great for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition planned for 1915. They were encouraging investment in the city for it, and people wouldn't invest in a city they thought was going to shake down and burn up. It's why the damage for Loma Prieta was as major as it was and why the next one the size of 1906 will be very bad indeed. I also happen to know that four of the dorms of my alma mater are designed to pancake. Thin walls and thick floors. In theory, that's great; less loss of life if only one falls over than if one falls into another and knocks it over as well. In practice, well, I was in the dorms during the Nisqually earthquake with that knowledge in my head. I was quite sure it wasn't going to be in my head much longer. I think I'll go with our standards. The radio was doing an interview with a structural engineer who has been working in the city inspecting buildings since the quake. He was saying that the majority of the severly damaged buildings were pre-1930s. For those that don't know and haven't looked it up, 1931 was the year of the great Napier Quake, a 7.8 that killed 256 people in the North Island town of Napier. It also pretty much levelled large parts of the city, so much so that due to it having to be almost entirely rebuilt it is now one of the Art Deco capitals of the world. Our engineers and law makers learned a lot that day and with knowledge that we are going to have 7-8's hitting most of our major cities (including the Capital, Wellington) given enough time, the decision was made to build to survive. The first building codes were introduced in 1932, and the first Building Act was in 1935. Since then they have been revised several times based on what has been further learned from EQs in both NZ and overseas (including Kobe and Mexico City), with the latest update in 2004 when all non-residential buildings and multi-story residential buildings that were not up to the current regulations had to be strengthened to at least withstand a moderate Earthquake (one about a third of the size that a new building will withstand.) While this was to be a 10 year project with buildings to be compliant by 2014, many of the ones in Christchurch had been strengthened leading to their survival. While the standards do mean that the exact type of quake varies depending on building type, ground type, and location in the country, I believe the current standard means that a building in NZ should survive a direct hit by an 8.0 earthquake long enough to evacuate it safetly, which is the goal, keep the building standing long enough for the people in it to get out alive.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 5, 2010 19:26:42 GMT -4
Ironically one of the biggest threats they have currently is actually the weather. The country is now being battered by a severe storm that is kicking up winds over 100km/h in the South Island and it's not a lot nicer in the North with gale force winds and heavy rain over pretty much the entire country. There is a lot of worry that any destablised buildings that haven't been secured could collapse due to the extra wind loading on their earthquake weakened framework, or that loose debris will be picked up by the wind and thrown about as deadly missiles.
Added to that is the fear that the heavy rains may cause several rivers to breach their compromised stopbanks before the damage can be repaired, and so result in serious flooding.
They are certainly having a lot of Nature thrown at them all at once.
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