Christchurch quake; widespread luting

[Nick]

Baby wipes eh? More usues than you can poke a stick at! Thanks Lillian.
If anybody's interested here's a link to some pictures taken yesterday of the damage.
Avonside (where the majority of pictures were taken) is near the Avon river (funilly enough) which runs right through the city, this area along with the older central city buildings, seems to be the worst hit as far as structural damage goes. A friend who lives there,has essentially got to leave his house and belongings as they're trashed & the house condemned. The shot of the lifted manhole is pretty typical of most, the ground has either sunken around them or the concrete surround has been lifted up, makes driving an interesting proposition. Petrol station around the corner from here has had all the tanks lifted by about 300mm, needless to say he's closed!
Things are getting into some normality, the council guys are working around the clock to repair the roads, some bridges across the river will be out of action for months & months before they even start getting repaired. Can't see Christchurch being the city I know for some time yet & unfortunately alot of our heritage buildings, which gave the city it's character (& the thing I most loved about it), will no longer be around as they weren't quake proofed. Crying or Very sad
Anyway just thought I'd give a quick update if anybody was interested. Martin will probably be interested in the crack photo's from a geological point of view, & there might be a few a few cheap bottles of plonk going Martin. Wink
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A handmade Guitar for $300 ? Phftt. Sure, give me a chunk of wood, a hammer & some 6 inch nails & I'll see what I can knock up for ya.

Nick Oliver
www.oliver-guitars.com

[kiwigeo]

Thanks for the update Nick. My sister was out at Porritt Park yesterday and was amazed at the damage. That service station with the uplifted forecourt would be on Wainoni Road? Id hate to see the condition of their underground fuel tanks.

I agree with you when you say the whole character of the city is going to change with alot of the old buildings destroyed. Lets hope the bldi Council exerts some control on what gets up in their place.

Cheers Martin
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[Nick]

kiwigeo wrote:
I agree with you when you say the whole character of the city is going to change with alot of the old buildings destroyed. Lets hope the bldi Council exerts some control on what gets up in their place.

Cheers Martin

Hopefully not alot of those tall concrete boxes you see in many generic cities of the world. Hopefully the Arts centre gets a clean bill of health and many of the other gothic style achitecture down Durham street.
The petrol station I mentioned is in Queenspark but not the only one I suspect with lifted tanks. As for Porritt park, there was an article in the paper this morning about how much Hockey NZ has recently spent on Porritt & now it may be just left to rot because of the cost to get it back to how it was.
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A handmade Guitar for $300 ? Phftt. Sure, give me a chunk of wood, a hammer & some 6 inch nails & I'll see what I can knock up for ya.

Nick Oliver
www.oliver-guitars.com

[kiwigeo]

What needs alot of work is building codes in Chch...especially with respect to building on sandy soils. Theyve gone to great lengths to ensure people building on Banks Peninsula have foundations that rest on soild rock rather than the overlying loess soils. Liquifaction of sandy soils is a well known phenomeon and should have been addressed along time ago.
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One can never have enough tonewood

[kiwigeo]

One thing you're going to see is a flood of shody tradesmen heading for Christchurch to make a quick buck....theyre nearly as bad as looters in my book.
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One can never have enough tonewood

[Ronald_Handmade]

kiwigeo wrote:
One thing you're going to see is a flood of shody tradesmen heading for Christchurch to make a quick buck....theyre nearly as bad as looters in my book.

Did someone say quick buck? Hmmm...

Oh, wait, you said SHODDY tradies. Never mind...
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Ian.

My wife will hate this hobby, but at least it'll stop me restoring & registering my motorbike!

[kiwigeo]

Initial report from Geonet on the Chch quake. Of particular interest is the 22km long fault scarp that is a direct result of the quake. Geologically Christchurch sits on around 2000m of Quaternary aged gravels that sit on an older Mesozoic basement. Immediately to the east (lower RH corner of map) of the city is banks Peninusla made up of two Pliocene aged volcanoes (Lyttleton and Akaroa volcanics).

http://www.geonet.org.nz/news/sep-2010- ... ponse.html

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[Ronald_Handmade]

Wow...

The photos of the buildings I've seen all seem to look like "just" another earthquake, but that shot of the field with the side slip right through the middle is just incredible!

Far out...

I'm surprised (and very relieved) that there weren't a lot more casualties. I have a few hundred relatives scattered throughout Un Zud, but no reports of any injuries through the family grapevine as yet.

All the best to the members and their families affected.
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Ian.

My wife will hate this hobby, but at least it'll stop me restoring & registering my motorbike!

[morgan]

Those are amazing pictures from GeoNet.

It appears the suffering is only going to get worse. Looks like the region is going to face a beer shortage:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10671608

Should we arrange some emergency supplies?

[Nick]

Morgan wrote:
It appears the suffering is only going to get worse. Looks like the region is going to face a beer shortage:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=10671608

Should we arrange some emergency supplies?

It's only Lion Nathan Morgan, nothing in their product range I would want to drink, bath in maybe but not drink! Laughing Laughing I'm abit spoilt as a mate of mine is a brewer of English & American style beers at a popular bar here in Chch.... which is still standing so I won't go thirsty. Laughing

That fault Martin was apparently previously unknown and geologists believe it hasn't moved in the last 16,000 years.....but it sure made up for it Saturday!
As to building on the sand, Mark Quiggley was saying on the news last night that the geologists have been telling developers for years not to build on sand because of the liquifaction factor, I think Kaipoi might raise the public's awareness of the consequences of such a practice & it may stop(as people won't buy on sand). But putting all the underground services in & laying out of roads are so much easier (thus cheaper) to do in sand so it's going to have to take a lot of voices to change developers thinking.
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A handmade Guitar for $300 ? Phftt. Sure, give me a chunk of wood, a hammer & some 6 inch nails & I'll see what I can knock up for ya.

Nick Oliver
www.oliver-guitars.com

[kiwigeo]

When I worked at the NZ Geological Survey back in the mid to late eighties we used to provide free input into local body district planning schemes. The service included identification of Geological hazards. The government decided to require that all government agencies become profit making entities and the numbskulls that populate the town planning sections of the various councils deemed identification of geological hazards not important and refused to pay for the service.

Ironically the hazards associated with building on the loess soils on the Port Hills has been addressed and building foundations generally have to be extended down to the underlying volcanics.
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One can never have enough tonewood

[kiwigeo]

Nick O wrote:


That fault Martin was apparently previously unknown and geologists believe it hasn't moved in the last 16,000 years.....but it sure made up for it Saturday!
As to building on the sand, Mark Quiggley was saying on the news last night that the geologists have been telling developers for years not to build on sand because of the liquifaction factor, I think Kaipoi might raise the public's awareness of the consequences of such a practice & it may stop(as people won't buy on sand). But putting all the underground services in & laying out of roads are so much easier (thus cheaper) to do in sand so it's going to have to take a lot of voices to change developers thinking.

The problem with identifying fault systems that haven't moved for a long period of time is they aren't expressed as geomorphological features such as fault scarps, drainage patterns etc as the Mesozoic basement of the Canterbury Basin is covered by 2000m of relatively young Quaternary age sediments. The faults cant be identified until they actually move.

Part of the problem with developers is they tend to dominate alot of the local bodies that formulate and police the building codes.
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One can never have enough tonewood

[Nick]

kiwigeo wrote:
The problem with identifying fault systems that haven't moved for a long period of time is they aren't expressed as geomorphological features such as fault scarps, drainage patterns etc as the Mesozoic basement of the Canterbury Basin is covered by 2000m of relatively young Quaternary age sediments. The faults cant be identified until they actually move.

Part of the problem with developers is they tend to dominate alot of the local bodies that formulate and police the building codes.

Nothing against the Geo boys for missing that one, It would be a big ask indeed for them to find all of the fault lines buried up & down the country!

Your last statement sums it up perfectly! Nothing like feathering your own nest & these boys are practiced experts at it. When my parents bought their house there were restrictions galore...the house had to be a certain distance from all boundaries & garages placed under a metre from a boundary fence had to have a breeze block wall to prevent fire spread. Once the developers got in & realised you could make more $ from having more houses on a given area of land, these bylaws went out of the window. I've seen houses on estates out at Halswell with less than 300mm between the soffits of neighbouring houses. Time you got a path down the side of your Kennel there wasn't enough room for grass.
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A handmade Guitar for $300 ? Phftt. Sure, give me a chunk of wood, a hammer & some 6 inch nails & I'll see what I can knock up for ya.

Nick Oliver
www.oliver-guitars.com

[Lillian]

Nick, we call those High Density Housing Plats or Planned Developed Residential Areas. Nice names for places that no longer have to deal with things like building setbacks (distance from building to boundary) and minimum lot size. Somewhere in the subdivision they have to have green and usually wet/swampy up here for the rain. Essentially what the developer did was to talk the County Council it to believing that there is no difference if everyone has a big yard or if they put everyone's big yard in one area and call it a green belt or a park. You end up with several houses on what would have been a decent sized lot. It all comes down to money.

[kiwigeo]

Nick,

The GNS boys and girls are trying to set up a spread of seismometers across the city to monitor aftershocks. You might be interested:


Scientists install miniature quake recorders in Christchurch houses

08/09/2010 4:50 pm

Scientists are approaching Christchurch home-owners asking if they are prepared to host a miniature seismometer in their house to record aftershocks.

During the next week they hope to install up to 200 of the earthquake sensors in a project that will collect important information about variation in the strength of ground-shaking across the city.

Information gathered by the instruments will help in calibrating engineering standards so New Zealand structures are in good shape to withstand future earthquakes.

The project is a collaboration between GNS Science, Victoria University of Wellington, and Stanford University in the United States.

It is the first time the instruments, brought here by Stanford University, have been used in New Zealand.

The sensors, called Quake-Catchers, are about the size of a cigarette packet and are connected by a USB cable to a home computer with a broadband.

When an aftershock above a certain strength occurs, they record the ground motions in three dimensions and send the information via the internet to a science data centre.

Project leader Hannah Brackley of GNS Science said the data collected would be of international significance.

"The earthquake in Canterbury is the most significant event to impact on an urban area since the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake," Dr Brackley said.

"The learning from this event, if well captured and applied across New Zealand, can help significantly to mitigate the impacts of future earthquakes."

Christchurch people interested in hosting an instrument in their house can contact: eqsensors@gns.cri.nz
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[morgan]

Considering most modern laptops and many phones and other devices have built in hardware for detecting motion (accelerometers), I wonder if they could leverage this also to help get wider data collection.

If the hardware is accurate enough in them they could function as an alternative to placing actual seismometers, and expand the coverage.

There is at least 1 iPhone app I'm aware of:
http://iphone3g-india.com/detect-earthq ... phone-app/

And here's a free MacBook one:
http://www.suitable.com/tools/seismac.html

A cheap distributed ad-hoc grid of seismometers could be a useful thing, if there was an easy way to collect the data.

There has been an initiative like this in California using laptops:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/your-laptop-may/

[kiwigeo]

Morgan,

The Quake catcher network uses either a stand alone accelerometer device or the triaxial accelerometers that Mac portables have inbuilt. iPhones would be of limited use as their accelerometers are dual axis devices.

See here for more info: http://qcn.stanford.edu/

Cheers Martin
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[morgan]

Ah sweet, I hadn't caught that the system being deployed was actually the one referred to in the old Wired article i.e. Quake Catcher. Interesting to note also that the accelerometers in iPhones et al. are only dual axis. Thanks for the info.

Do you have a link to that press release anywhere online?

[morgan]

Ah, found the press release with a bit of rummaging.

http://gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/ ... -recorders

[Nick]

Here's an interesting site that has been set up by a guy at uni here, it uses info from the GeoNet.org website (which monitors Seismic activity) & combines it into a time lapse of the Original earthquake & subsequent aftershocks since (which are still continuing by the way).
http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/

Also quite a nice you tube vid (some shots are repeated). See if Martin can pick some of the locations! Wink

http://youtube.com/watch?v=STWFsijfy4A

_________________
A handmade Guitar for $300 ? Phftt. Sure, give me a chunk of wood, a hammer & some 6 inch nails & I'll see what I can knock up for ya.

Nick Oliver
http://www.oliver-guitars.com

[kiwigeo]

It seems there's a bit of scaremongering going on with stories of the Lyttleton Volcano erupting.

This is complete rubbish....the Lyttleton and Akaroa volcanoes are extinct. The mechanism behind the volcanics is no longer present and the chances of an eruption is zilch.....zero...nothing...it ain't gonna happen.
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One can never have enough tonewood

[Nick]

kiwigeo wrote:
It seems there's a bit of scaremongering going on with stories of the Lyttleton Volcano erupting.

This is complete rubbish....the Lyttleton and Akaroa volcanoes are extinct. The mechanism behind the volcanics is no longer present and the chances of an eruption is zilch.....zero...nothing...it ain't gonna happen.

Wanna bet??? The sky's going to fall in tomorrow too! Laughing Laughing
_________________
A handmade Guitar for $300 ? Phftt. Sure, give me a chunk of wood, a hammer & some 6 inch nails & I'll see what I can knock up for ya.

Nick Oliver
www.oliver-guitars.com

[kiwigeo]

Morgan wrote:
Ah, found the press release with a bit of rummaging.

http://gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/ ... -recorders

Here's an application I just loaded up on my MacBook Pro portable and it works a treat.

http://www.suitable.com/tools/seismac.html

The software reads and visually presents data from the Macbook's built in triaxial accelerometer. There's also a little program for calibrating the accelerometer.
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[kiwigeo]

A quiet day at work today so I thought I'd trawl through Google and try and find the nuttiest explanation for Christchurch's earthquake.

Didnt take me long.....apparently we can blame the Freemasons or the Russian military for causing the quake:

http://threedeadwords.blogspot.com/2010 ... chive.html

Make your own mind up but I think this chick is a complete nutter. Confused
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[Kim]

Rubbish! Accelerometer my foot. Everybody knows that the NZ quakes were caused by the spirit of bum fondling blokes being very angry that the all blacks have beaten the wallabies AGAIN..10 in a row you mongrels... no bloody wonder our tectonic plates are attacking yours, its simply not cricket!!















Well done the all blacks, despite the adversity they still give us a whooping Wink
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