Rolleston/Burnham, South Island, NZ It's been a busy few weeks! Was away on geology fieldtrips all the previous two weeks, then on Saturday morning 4th September 2010 at 4.35 am we got woken in Westport to a reasonable but very long earthquake. My husband was back in Christchurch at the time and texted me saying "are you ok?". I replied, "yes!"...
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The magnitude 7.1 Christchurch earthquake broke off an enormous chunk of Castle Rock in the Port Hills which has tumbled down towards the Lyttelton tunnel. View from Morgan's Valley (-43.578037° 172.714828°).
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The earthquake knocked over the bird bath.
Debra points at the beginnings of a sand volcano not long after the big earthquake.
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One of the many sand volcanos erupting from the ground after the Christchurch earthquake.
And, yes, the newspaper always gets through! The Press newspapers were delivered in our area of Hoon Hay in the hours after the earthquake.
(I righted the bird bath after the initial earthquake. None of the after-shocks were sufficient to knock it over again.)
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These were scattered across the park.
This one was really flowing out of the ground.
Robbie watches a sand volcano smother his driveway.
An usual thing to see coming from the ground in Hoon Hay, Christchurch.
It would have been a glorious Spring day in Christchurch had it not been for the magnitude 7.1 earthquake at 4:30 am. All the water and silt you can see covering the street in this photo erupted from the ground following the earthquake.
Sand volcanoes put the silt all over the road.
Laura, Nicola, and Debra watch a sand volcano build in the Wyn Street gutter.