There’s been three small earthquakes in Auckland yesterday, just in the space of three hours, all in the same place.
We felt one at home, probably the biggest at 9:00pm, the that was 4.5. Watching TV and the sofa went gently rocking for a few seconds. The sequence of possible reasons was as follows:
- The son playing with the cats.
- The neighbours drove into our house, again (see below for this).
- The earthquake.
Cats were relaxing and not rocking the house. We went outside, no trees or cars hit the house either. So it was a quake and we stayed for a few minutes outside amazed.
The interesting part is that Auckland is on a volcanic field and has 50 cones of extinct volcanoes and the media keeps us “prepared” for a new one to appear at some time and there is speculation about where it might come out. Three quakes in one place so quickly made me worried we are going to wake up with a new volcanoe in the morning that is only 40km away from us.
Now, in the morning, looking from the Orewa webcam East, the quake originated 30km out to sea, exactly this way, I’m happy to report no new volcanoes so far.
By the way, this is the place where we go out kitesurfing in easterly winds and you can occasionally see me and other kitesurfers through the web cam. These is a set of Lee’s pictures from Orewa.
Here is a TVNZ article about the quakes.
Regarding the neighbours driving into our house, thanks to the tree that saved us and the driver. That happened a few months ago and felt like a small earthquake too.
