The Earth Moved

A few weeks ago, I’d taken advantage of an deal on GrabOne to spend two nights in the Martinborough Hotel, a boutique hotel in the main square of Martinborough, in the centre of the wine-growing region of Wairarapa.

As we were setting out, we stopped for petrol. Barely had I put the nozzle in the tank when the ground started shaking. The customer at the next pump looked at me and said “that’s not me imagining it, is it?” “No,” I replied, “that’s the ground moving.” I quickly re-holstered the nozzle and crouched down behind the car until the shaking stopped.

Inside the petrol station, one of the staff was picking up crates of water bottles which had been tipped over in the rattling. Nothing else was disturbed, however, so we made our merry way over the Rimutakas to Martinborough. On the way we checked Geonet on my phone, and found out that the quakes (as there had been several) were more severe than we thought, so we checked in with our offices, to find that everyone had been sent home.

Road damage near Seddon

We reached Martinborough with no further incident, and were sitting watching the news (main story: earthquake in Wellington) when a further big one hit. This we felt rather more, as we were on the first floor of the hotel, and the building shook quite considerably.

The aftershocks continued through the night and the next day, although nothing that was of the same magnitude.

As usual, the media tried to big up the story, trying to find people to say they were scared. In this they were hampered by the good people of Wellington, where massive outbreaks of sensibleness took place. The media take on traffic "fleeing" the city is just what happens on a Friday afternoon - i.e. people going home.  It's called "Rush Hour", media people, and it happens every day.

As of today, there is still an 89% chance of a further aftershock of 5.5, and a 40% chance of a magnitude 6.