On Wednesday night the biggest earthquake in 80 years struck New Zealand however you could be forgiven for possibly not even knowing yet given that the New Zealand media appear to be the only causalities of the quake.

The quake struck at 9:22 pm, and the epicentre was located in Dusky Sound at the south-west corner of the South Island. Its magnitude of 7.8 makes its size comparable with the Buller (or Murchison) earthquake of 1929 and the damaging Hawke’s Bay earthquake of 1931.

Now 7.8 is huge, it is the same size as the quake that struck Sichuan, China in 2008 and bigger then the earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan in 1995. At first it was assigned a size of 8.2 and it sent a small tidal wave across the Tasman that hit parts of Sydney. But you knew all that right? Because the media reported it right? No? Oh.

In fact the New Zealand media and civil defense response to this whole event has been really poor. On Wednesday night I got the majority of my news through Twitter (around 35 updates per second at times) and any major development would break on that at least 15 minutes ahead of any news website. To make matters worse after the earthquake a Tsunami warning was issued for NZ. This was not reported on the news until around 10.30pm at which point it had been canceled (however they reported it as valid).

Within minutes of the quake the news media also had reporters on the scene ready for life crosses and the like right? No. Because this wasn’t Auckland it was obvious not news. In fact the following morning the Herald was still reporting that the quake was only 6.6 and no mention of any Tsunami. Now one could partially forgive the news media for playing down the issue given that it happened in a very remote area of the country and that no one was killed or injured.

True, however this is not something to be sneezed at. We were very lucky this time, and by playing it down the news media is not helping. Because if another quake strikes sometime in the future and hits a more populated area how many people will just attempt to carry on as normal even if something is seriously wrong?

For the aussie take on the quake check this out: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25787792-421,00.html

In particular:

“The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said small tsunamis, followed by unusual current movements, were detected at Spring Bay in southern Tasmania at 10.05pm and Port Kembla, south of Sydney, at 10.06pm.”

The Geonet report, very detailed now, however this took nearly two days to become fully up to date: http://www.geonet.org.nz/news/article-jul-16-2009-fiordland-quake-biggest-for-80-years.html

At least they get how serious it was

“the remoteness of the epicentre, means that New Zealand has been very fortunate – if this earthquake had happened anywhere else it would have caused huge damage”.

And some more details on the “non-existent” tsunami

A small tsunami was generated by this earthquake, with the tide gauge at Jackson Bay, near Haast, recording a wave of 1 metre (peak to trough). An Australian gauge located out at sea, south-west of New Zealand, also detected a small wave some time after the main earthquake, which may have been generated by a landslip into the sea.

1 metre is pretty big. Not huge. But still big.

The USGS website is where I got a lot of information from on the night. It updates a lot faster than Geonet: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009jcap.php

Also Tsunami info through NOAA: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=0

Tags: Earthquake, Media, New Zealand, News

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Comment and Opinion, New Zealand, News & Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.