In which comes a time to reconnect with loved ones

[zeborah]

I speak of course not of Christmas but of a shallow mag 4.9 aftershock centred not 10 minutes walk from my parents' house (about half an hour's from mine). (This followed a lower magnitude bunch in the night and early morning, all in town. This earthquake series hasn't been very active right in town - usually it's 20km SW - but when it is this close it's quite noticeable.) Piano swaying, cupboards banging, twitter offering reports of malls closing (on Boxing Day. There goes the economy again) and people crying in the aisles and a building roof caving in (I'm presuming it was empty or there'd be much more talk of that) and power outages and such.

...Dude. Serious cracks in Ballantynes? </rumour> I hate shopping there myself: they seem to eschew signage on the grounds that if you don't know where things are you clearly don't belong at such a high class establishment, but it is a bit of an icon.

My family's tended to lose power in the bigger ones so I gave them a call: this time they kept power but lost internet (presumably their ISP has lost power). (Ah, they've just got it back now.)

There goes another siren, joy.

[ETA: Twitter news continues apace. One has to take it all with a grain of salt [ETA bis: for example, for "roof caving in" read "some ceiling tiles down"...] but it's so much faster than conventional news.]

Christmas, however, was great, with all our family traditions plus some non-traditional glorious weather; and spending Boxing Day morning watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special while sitting on the floor by an interior wall isn't really anything to complain about.

[Incidentally, there was a 7.6 near Vanuatu in the night, somewhat before our ones started waking me up. I don't know how this would have affected the areas there, it'll depend much on local geology and construction and so forth, and early reports haven't yet heard of damage or fatalities but... I'm keeping an eye on it.]

Comments

[keieeeye]

Malls closing D: Arrrrggghh things were calming down again too. This morning I was actually half wondering if I'd dreamed the ones during the night and then I was like "ok either I see the future in my dreams OR NOT." I looked out the window and bunnies were lying on the lawn, I went out after Dr Who and Holly went over to the gate so I'd come open it and give him a big cuddle. Nellie was sitting upstairs so I guess quakes don't make the hutch wobble or anything much. It wasn't even so much worse than the others at first, then it sort of... kept going.

[zeborah]

Ones of this magnitude I don't seem to mind so much; or at least I recover quicker. The first one in the night I scrambled to be by my wall, and I woke for all the others, but had no trouble going back to sleep (albeit not on my back; I do feel a bit exposed having my stomach to the ceiling in times of earthquake) and this morning I've been scrambling to interior walls and such, but just habit and then carrying on.

The 10:30 seems to have opened one of my interior doors (which is a weird door at the best of times so this doesn't imply much) and knocked down a couple of cans in my pantry (the chocolate remains safe, nom nom.)

Boots is recovering quicker than she used to, too (well, after the 8am one, anyway; haven't seen her since 10:30).

Not liking what I'm hearing from the CBD and malls though. :-(

[(Anonymous)]

They seem to be continuing. I decided I'd rather be in the garden where I don't feel them as much, but it didn't work - heard a roar like a train for the last one and a distinct shake in the ground. Twelve in the last twelve hours according to geonet.
And yes I will be keeping away from the Boxing Day sales (but anything I was going to buy, I'll probably still buy - just a few days later)

Catherine