5 Points to New Zealand?

The Earthquake from the 14th of November 2016 in Kaikoura was somehow special. It is almost a miracle, since “only” two people died. With a magnitude of 7.8 it was one of the strongest earthquakes New Zealand has ever experienced. Last session we were discussing about the various failures, that were comitted by New Zealand authorities, like the huge miscalculation of the earthquakes’ strength, the reliance on Hawaii concerning the tsunami warning or the failure of the emergency numbers. In a nation like New Zealand, where earthquakes, or at least the threat of earthquakes, are almost part of the daily routine, and a nation with that level of technological possibilities, such a disaster must not happen. The list of things that went wrong appeared like a really english-humoured comedy script which mocks New Zealand authorities. With all the luck, like the tsunami hitting at low tide and so on, I could not help but think of Professor McGonnagal walking in on Harry, Ron and Hermoine who just beat the troll in the girls’ bathroom.

The quest for New Zealand authorities now is to step up their game and get sort out the various failures that became obvious on the 14th of November. It will be a challenge, probably a costly one, to employ enough people, to assign responsibilities and to be better prepared next time.

The above will be a challenge, but more importantly will be the reestablishment of trust into the authorities after the shocking disclosure of the failures. While visiting the Geonet-homepage, I noticed an article trying exactly that, by showing the accuracy of the predictions of aftershocks. You can also see, that the people of New Zealand demand more consistency of their responsibles by the introduction of the article:

“Specifically, people want to know if the sequence is behaving as we have forecasted.”

With that in mind, one can only hope for improvement, considering the frequency of earthquakes. Also really shocking was a subpage on the Geonet website, which allwos people to report felt earthquakes. Most of the quakes mentioned there are at a really low intensity, but no matter which time of the day you check, there are always 5+ reports within the last hour. I think this especially underlines the omnipresence of earthquakes in New Zealand. That being said, it is only a matter of time until another major quake will happen, and hope is on better preparations next time.