General Chat

And dont forget the tornado the other day, not too many miles from where I live. My friend saw and heard it.

We certainly live in an interesting country. And dont forget our volcanoes. The experts say we could have another eruption somewhere in Auckland at some time. Exciting!

Huia. (Off to bed now).

I see Air NZ has put on a bigger plane for a flight to Samoa - people turning up at Auckland Airport in their Pyjamas wanting to go.
I think we have more Samoans living up here than live over there or is that Tongans? No doubt we will be sending a few people over to help clean up.

My thoughts are with all those who have lost families over there - the whole resort side of the island was literally washed out.

I suppose we can consider ourselves very lucky we did not get the Aussie dust and we have suffered no consequences of the Tsunami. Wonder what is coming next ?

Norma

Hi there my fellow Kiwis.

I have felt several earthquakes where we live in the Hunua Hills and my son in Rotorua feels loads of them.

In Whangarei harbour the boats were definitely rocked by the tsunami rushing up but no damage done apart from an inflatable being swamped, as far as I could tell from the TV news.

Huia.

We are on two major fault lines and are waiting for the "Big One" to hit.
I have my earthquake kit stored by the front door just in case.

Deb

My son-in-law is doing his PHD and he is into Earthquakes. Apparently there is a big hole under one of our mountains and this was his subject for his thesis when he did his Msc. He goes around digging fault lines and studying all this which is way beyond me and he absolutely loves it.

Auckland where I live very rarely has an earthquake - but Wellington where my daughters experiences them all the time.

A few years back up Northland NZ my cousins who live practically on the beach had been advised from Overseas that a Tsunami was coming so they were rushing around waking up campers in the early morning. One of the younger ones was over from New York at the time and he had to wake up his girlfriend and tell her they were heading for higher ground to which she replied "shall I bring the wine?"
It all amounted to nowt but it was a good story at the sixtieth birthday we went to that evening.

cheers

Perse.

Even if the tsunami was not as strong as in 2004, we can only begin to imagine the fear of those poor people when they heard or saw of it happening again.

Aileen
Our nearby town of Folkestone was hit by an earthquake in recent years. It was frightening, but mercifully there were no real casualties, just one person slightly hurt. When you witnessed the damage to so many buildings, that was remarkable.

Gwyn

Do you think they are warnings for a biggy

I know we have relatively mild earthquakes here in the UK but was surprised to learn that we get about 60 a year.

Our saving grace is that they are relatively small and cause only things like chimney pots crashing down at most, but if anyone was hurt it would be on the front pages of the newspapers.

You go about your daily life and I live down here in Surrey and am quite a way from the Thames.

What if we had a sizeable earthquake here in the London area. The Thames Barrier is a wonderful bit of engineering but could it withstand a fall out which caused a tsunami here?

No matter what safeguards we put in place you have to wonder if we can withstand natural forces.

Aileen xxx

Terrifying and unimaginable. Floods in the Philippines and a typhoon in Vietnam. I cannot imagine what they are going through.

Yes Aileen it is frightening,
Keeping everything crossed for every one involved.

Hi,

Frightening isn't it.

I've just been reading that there have been about 30 earthquakes in New Zealand over the past month alone.

Aileen xxx

A tsunami hit the island of American Samoa following an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean.
The quake measured 8.0 on the Richter scale.

Stuart Weinstein from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre told Sky News a two-metre high wave had struck the capital Pago Pago.

He also said the size of it was "potentially destructive".

The centre in Honolulu, Hawaii, issued a tsunami warning for American Samoa and other areas of the Pacific, including New Zealand.

A tsunami watch was posted elsewhere, including Hawaii and the Marshall Islands.

The quake happened at 6:48am (local time) halfway between Samoa and American Samoa.

In the Samoan capital Apia, families fled their homes for higher ground.

There were reports of severe shaking that lasted for up to three minutes.

New Zealander Graeme Ansell said the beach village of Sau Sau Beach Fale had been levelled.

The epicenter of the quake was located 120 miles southwest of American Samoa and at a depth of 11.2 miles, said the US Geological Survey.