RealGM

TASTIC wrote:Hey chaps - yep I'm fine where I am - appreciate the concern.

Basically here's New Zealand and why we're a bit of a ticking time-bomb for earthquakes.

There's really hilly terrain across the country which makes for great hunting and fishing, but I'm 500 miles away from the epicentre of this quake - on a different island no less - and yet it still shook us!

Had a few messages from mates in Canada, the US and London so I drew a map for the last email (when i say 'drew', I marked out where I live in Tauranga and where the quake hit in Kaikoura):



It's pretty nuts. Parts of the towns and cities have been completely cut off and the sea literally dropped 1m in level - so TONS of sea-life was exposed and had to be rescued/eaten.

Check this out - this is what we call paua - in the US it's abalone. You can see these are usually well under water and you have to dive under with a knife or screwdriver to get them off the rocks:



Not to mention apparently the biggest news was that some cows were stranded and had to be rescued!!



Few more pics:







I'm not sure who has been in a big quake, but I've been in a couple. You hear the rumbling before the shake most times and it feels like you're drunk and a huge person is moving the ground. Simple as that analogy is, there's no other real way to describe it and to make matters worse there's been over 1700 aftershocks since the first big 7.5 one a couple days ago.

Wellington is our capital and state highway 1 and 2 were both closes in and out of the city - though i think they've recently re-opened.

So yeah, that's what's happening down here in NZ. Thankfully nowhere near as bad as the Christchurch quake a few years ago.