By Bernard Hickey
An earthquake measuring 6.6 struck near Seddon in Marlborough shortly after 2.30 pm on Friday. It was felt heavily in Wellington, forcing evacuations from offices and causing gridlock in the city, but there were no reports of damage or injury.
State Highway 1 from Seddon to Kaikoura was closed because of damage to bridges and two bridges in Blenheim were extensively damaged, NZTA said.
The earthquake was centred 10 kilometres south-east of Seddon in Marlborough at 2.31 pm and was 8 kms deep, Geonet reports. It was initially measured at 6.9, then downgraded to 6.2, then upgraded to 6.6.
Regular aftershocks were felt in the following 90 minutes, including a brace around 3.50 pm measuring 5.7.
Office workers in Wellington's CBD have left their buildings and fire engines are active in the downtown area. Many companies and departments have advised staff to go home for the day while buildings are checked by engineers.
Roads quickly became gridlocked as people tried to leave the CBD. The train network has been closed until further notice.
The New Zealand Fire Service said it had not received any calls involving serious damage to buildings or property.
"Fire appliances are responding to a many of the automatic alarms that have been triggered in the central city area and to a few calls reporting people trapped in lifts," it said.
The Fire Service said there had been reports of power lines down in the Seddon area.
The New Zealand dollar initially dropped 40 basis points to 80.55 USc after the quake, before rebounding by 3pm to 80.7 USc.
The NZX announced just after 3 pm it had halted trade on its markets. It said it would reopen just before 4pm.
Telecom said no significant damage appeared to have been sustained to its networks in the Lower North Island and Upper South Island.
"For a period of time after the major earthquake hit just after 2.30pm, our networks experienced severe congestion as a result of many people trying to make calls to loved ones," Telecom said, adding it encouraged customers to text rather than call to leave the network open for emergency calls.
111 calls from Wellington have been diverted to Christchurch as part of Telecom's business continuity plans.
Telecom said it had decided to close all its key buildings in Wellington area as a precaution pending engineering checks.
The Wellington Airport said it had briefly stopped flights to check its runways and had reopened shortly before 3 pm.
Main highway closed
NZTA said there were rock falls on State Highway One in the Blenheim area.
"Needle Creek Bridge and Flaxbourne Bridge, which are about 5kms apart on State Highway (SH1), are closed. Both are located south of Seddon," NZTA said, asdding SH1 was closed from Seddon to Kaikoura.
NZTA said it was doing structural checks of the highway and bridges in the area.
Insurer Tower said it had received limited reports of damage and its staff were safe.
Precinct Properties said no major damage had been reported to its buildings, which include State Insurance Tower, Vodafone on the Quay, 171 Featherston Street, 125 The Terrace, No. 1 and 3 The Terrace, Pastoral House, Mayfair House, 80 The Terrace, Deloitte House and Bowen Campus.
(Updated with details, comments from Telecom, Fire Service, NZTA, Tower, Precinct, Quake map)
17 Comments
Geonet report it as a 6.6 now.
Bernard, I hope you took earthquake resilience into consideration when choosing a home in Wellington. Did you remember the advice I gave last year?
It is scandalous that individual dwellings don't ever need to be brought up to code and even multi storey units have 20 years. There are a lot of homes that will kill if a big one strikes and home owners' knowing their buildings risks and how to minimise them would save lives and money with little expense. For instance choosing to place a bed under a chimney could be a life or death decision. And a few 4by 2s bracing a basement wall, may be the difference between a floor or ceiling collapsing.
Had endless emails from overseas tonight asking if we are ok, the news has gone far and wide...wonder where it will leave insurance if this pattern continues...
The ground accelertion is still relatively low in Wellington around .75 for this one, still the aftershocks can do your head in...yes Auckland will get a second look for those in a postion to consider it as an option.
My parents built a townhouse on a moderate sloping hillside in Hataitai about 9 years ago. They hardly felt a thing.
Hopefully that is as big as it gets in this latest series of events. I guess it's a bit of a wake up call. And the reality is as a fault-ridden city Welli could have events a lot bigger. The positive is this might shake (no pun intended) the complacency out of some people.
Little story.... According to my mum when I was a young nipper in Welli, on several occasions, I said an earthquake is coming, and several minutes later they occured.
I thought chch would be a wake up call, at the very least peeps across the country would get 3 days supply of food and water and therefore not have to queue in a supermarket but instead get themselves home, gather children, check whanau, dig toilet et cetera et cetera. But no.
When I heard the keep calm/carry on message (which always includes the line, 'building owners are responsible for building safety...') i knew you were in trouble.
Glad no ones dead (last I heard although mortality rates will increase through stress; jokes aside, check your elderly, look for warning signs of cardiac arrest). But Wellington, Auckland and Dunedin are much more vulnerable than Christchurch. We, at least, could walk out if we had to. Ngarongo Gorge is slow on a good day at rush hour...
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