NZ Quake

This coming weekend is the 75th anniversary of the Royal New Zealand Navy, there are naval ships from arround the world, Canada, USA, Australia, and a few others, plus maritime reconnaissance aircraft from Japan, and USA. Some have arrived, more tomorrow.

They can't get too close to shore at Kaikura as the sea bed has risen at least 2.5 meters.

An RNZAF Hercules did a couple of air drops today, a generator and other bits this morning (WED), and 5000L of drinking water in the afternoon.

Ian S C

Edited By Ian S C on 16/11/2016 15:06:52

Thanks for the update Ian.

You Kiwis are a mighty resilient bunch. Such community spirit, everyone is doing everything possible to help each other. We could do well to learn from your example.

My youngest is a builder and is in Christchurch for a year. Plenty of brickwork for him to do there!!!!

Mike

Brickwork in an earthquake zone? Bad idea

Actually brickwork in the traditional sense is very rare in NZ, and would not have been allowed in new construction for many years. What is quite common is what is called brick veneer, where the frame of the house is wooden, but has a single layer of bricks attached to the framework with metal straps nailed to the frame and trapped in the mortar between the layers of bricks. This has been shown to perform quite well in earthquakes, and in the worst case the bricks will end up on the ground around the house. While this is not good, if the earthquake is that severe you don't want to be close to any sort of building. In the North Island, where I live, it has always been noticeable that there were more brick veneer houses as you travelled north through the Waikato and on to Auckland. This was mostly because the earthquake risk is lower there.

Christchurch in particular had a problem with a lot of older buildings that were built with brick in the more traditional way, especially older shops. These tend to be particularly bad since they have large openings at the front for the doors and windows, often with a heavy facade above. But then, the largest number of casualties were in a relatively modern building where both the design and the checking of it were incompetent.

One thing you can see in the pictures is the complete failure of a chimney at the Waiau pub. That is an old building, and it looks like the chimney will have been done with the old style lime mortar. This was not all that strong even when new, and deteriorates with age. Those bricks will have been sitting on a weak layer of lightly bonded sand and as you will see if you go looking for pictures of the quake on the web, the brickwork has just turned into individual bricks.

There will be some high rise buildings in Wellington demolished as a result of this quake. It should be noted that designing for earthquakes means that the building should not collapse during the quake, it does not mean that it will necessarily be usable afterwards. In absorbing the energy, the reinforced concrete is likely to turn into a steel cage full of rubble. Although Wellington is quite a way from the epicentre, this quake went on for quite a long time, and apparently this was quite hard on the buildings.

John

After a BIG earthquake in Napier in 1931 structural brick building were outlawed through out NZ, all buildings require a frame, either wood, or now days quite a few are steel framed, over this the building may be clad in weather boards, bricks, or plastered poly foam. It may be possible to use tilt slab concrete for houses, it is used for other buildings, no frame required.

My house has concrete tiles on the roof (about 20 tons of worry), and the outer veneer is a concrete brick known as Summerhill Stone, popular in the 1960/70s when this place was built, after the quake in 2010 there was some minor cracking in the mortar which just needed chipping out , and re pointing, it took 10 kg of mortar, and a couple of days, and the tiles stayed on the roof.

Around Canterbury there are very few brick chimneys now, but quite a few patches on roofs, ie unpainted iron, or different coloured tiles where the chimney was.

Ian S C

I seem to have stirred up a hornets nest by saying my youngest if finding plenty of brickwork in Christchurch while on his working holiday in NZ.

Sure, it makes perfect sense to have outlawed structural brick building through out NZ, as Ian had just said.

However my son is finding plenty of brickwork in Christchurch, mostly repairs and re-pointing of older buildings. As Ian found out, someone has to do the repair work and my lad is doing his share to help.

My dad told me about this:

Glad to here you're ok Ian. Hope everyone else is undamaged and can talk about it later in the year as a fond memory.

Wife likes crayfish and salad so not telling her about that or new demands for holiday destination will be made

another Ian

Spoke to my brother Tues, Lives in Auckland, Mangere bridge. He was away over the time when the quake occurred, helping a friend move house in Whangamata, says they didn't feel much but had a tsunami warning siren go off so they headed for high ground until the 'all clear ' all friends of his on the south island were ok.

George.

I live about 5 miles from central Wellington and Sunday night was a bit of a rude awakening at 12:02am however, as you know, the worst of the impact was on the South Island.

Local bus services were running from first thing on Monday morning and Monday was spent at home awaiting information on the state of the city. The news trickled in through the day. A few buildings damaged and were being inspected. The PM announced on the early news that his office desk had been overturned. It became clear that most of the damage was to buildings at the Parliament end of the city, which tends to be occupied by government agencies.

Monday evening came torrential rain which bought flooding to add to the slips blocking rail and road links. I'll let somebody else describe the NZ phenomena called 'slips'. Neil’s cows photo and the rail line pics are good examples but they are a regular occurrence even without earthquakes.

On Tuesday much of the cleanup of broken glass etc had been done and we started returning to work. All seemed fine, aftershocks continued but nothing major. As the day went on damaged buildings were inspected and expectations that 'we'll be back at work by Thursday' became, 'maybe a few weeks', and in one case 'a year'.

On Wednesday a building was found with a major crack and the whole area cordoned off in case it fell down.

On Thursday a multi story car park was deemed extremely unsafe and 60 other buildings to be of concern.

On Friday the announcement that demolition is going to start next week on the building found on Wednesday, the car park and the 'it will be a year' building.

Now the finger pointing is happening questioning how relatively new builds are so badly damaged and were we all too quick to return to the city centre. The Christchurch people must be wondering what all the fuss is about the devastation there was far worse.

As for us, a tube of toothpaste fell off the bathroom shelf. I expected to spend my enforced day off rearranging my workshop. You know how it is, books on shelves up to the ceiling, cupboards full, machinery, benches covered with the work from the day before. I expected it to be everywhere. Nothing had moved. I had the day to myself.

I think, that apart from those displaced from their accommodation because it is located close to dodgy buildings, life is going on as much as normal, as it can be. If not with nerves a bit frayed.

Pete

It seem stange but one of the buildings affected is Defense HQ, a new building, could be a year before its cleared for use.

A convoy of army trucks made it through this afternoon, a 24 hour trip from Christchurch, about 200 km.

The two cows and the calf were rescued.

Ian S C

Glade to hear Ian and co are OK. I am waiting to get an update from no1 sister who was 40 miles north of xchurch when it struck. They were due to go back to Blenheim but had to go via Murchison , 2hour trip turned into 2 day journey. Mum and no2 sister were at Hungarian gathering in Auckland which had just come from Wellington they were all shaken excuse pun. Gland to see the farmer got his cowes out, some pretty footwork there.

Hugh