Posts by Carol Stewart
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Slater has edited together two different sentences to make up a quote Anderton never uttered:
FFS. Disingenuous in the extreme not to acknowledge that 'seismic shift' is, like, a figure of speech widely understood by everyone over the age of about 10.
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I'm not entirely sure what to make of this piece by Chris de Freitas arguing that earthquake forecasting has been an expensive failure and that focusing on reducing vulnerability is the way to go.
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This Christchurch civil defence report from 2004 has a liquefaction hazard map on p18.
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Yes, we have started viewing our surroundings differently too. The place I would really not want to be in a big Weillington earthquake would be in a Pak and Save-type supermarket with all those heavy pallets stacked up high. I think most supermarkets now have systems of webbing to hold the pallets in place now, but I still wonder how effecitve they would be.
My preferred places to be in a big Wellington earthquake would be a) at Te Papa, with its fabulous base isolators, b) at home in bed, or c) somewhere near the cheese fridge at Moore Wilsons.. -
Back to liquefaction again.. this was a major cause of building damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area. It was a similar magnitude to the Chch earthquake, struck in the early evening (5pm) and killed 63 people. They were killed mostly by falling debris and a section of a motorway viaduct collapsing.
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Those earthquake drills were great,
We used to have tsunami drills at Opotiki Primary - on account of the proximity to White Island. They involved marching us all in an orderly line across a bridge over the Waioeka River ..
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A young friend in Christchurch did a study for a science fair project of her schoolmates' knowledge of natural hazards, awareness of consequences and extent of their family preparations. It was written up for the Australian Journal of Emergency Management here, in Issue 2.
The focus was on an Alpine Fault earthquake but there some interesting and prescient findings. -
Very nice take down of the frankly hysterical and stupid tone of far too much of the media coverage.
I agree, Craig. But full credit to national radio for their coverage- especially yesterday morning. And the civil defence response seems to have been really impressive.
I went to a very interesting lecture at Vic recently by John McClure. He is a psychology professor interested in the idea of attribution - ie how we explain and interpret events - and how that relates to fatalism and whether or not we bother to prepare for natural disasters. The 16 year old son of friends of ours in Fendalton suffered minor injuries when a bookshelf fell on him in bed - it really is worth doing stuff like making sure there are no heavy objects above your bed, and bolting bookshelves to the wall. Not that they were fatalistic, like everyone else they were completely taken by surprise. -
Lucy, I haven't read right through this thread, but to quickly answer your question .. UC is closed for a week.
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