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New Zealand Earthquakes 2013: Temblors Damage Homes And Destroy Bridge
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Strong earthquakes shook central New Zealand on Friday, damaging homes and roads and sending office workers scrambling for cover in the capital. No serious injuries were reported.
A magnitude-6.5 temblor struck just after 2:30 p.m. near the small South Island town of Seddon, and at least six aftershocks were 5.0 magnitude or stronger.
Several homes near the epicenter were severely damaged, with chimneys collapsing and roofs caving in, said police spokeswoman Barbara Dunn. She said a bridge was severely damaged on the main highway near Seddon, and that rocks and debris had fallen onto the road. Police closed a section of the highway.
Some buildings in Wellington, the capital, were evacuated, and items were knocked off shelves in places.
Police said a number of people were freed from Wellington elevators that stopped working. The initial temblor also forced the nation’s stock exchange to close for more than an hour.
Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown said there was Read more…
2/2/2012 — 6.9 magnitude earthquake north of New Zealand — Vanutau
New Zealand: 36 pilot whales die after stranding (Video)
A group of more than 90 pilot whales were beached on a spit on New Zealand’s South Island on Monday. Thirty-six of the whales had died by Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
A final attempt to refloat the whales will be made during high tide today.
According to the Australian Associated Press, the pod has repeatedly been stranded on the spit, in Golden Bay on New Zealand’s South Island.
“We tried to refloat the other 40 and they simply wouldn’t move. We tried pushing them out to sea, and they just wouldn’t go,” said the Department of Conservation’s area manager John Mason to the New Zealand Herald.
Close to 50 volunteers are helping the rescue efforts with people traveling from as far as Australia, Auckland and Invercargill to participate. The volunteers were working three to a whale and were Read more…
Huge ‘New Zealand swell’ hitting California
NEW ZEALAND SWELL: A beach goer takes photos of surfers and body boarders as a large swell hits California beaches.
Massive waves slamming into California’s coast – killing at least one person and causing millions of dollars in damage – are being labelled the “New Zealand surf” because of where they are coming from.
In a rare event, a big weather system between New Zealand and Antarctica has generated a heavy Pacific wide swell, bringing the waves to California.
Sean Collins, chief forecaster and president of Surfline, told news website Patch.com he warned Californian authorities over the swell.
“Extra caution is urged to keep the public aware and safe from these large waves and associated rip currents.”
He said it was one of the biggest swells to hit with some waves coming ashore at six to seven metres.
Collins said southern hemisphere storms routinely produced waves in California, but this latest one was in the top 10 percent of known waves.
The US National Weather Service has warned beachgoers were Read more…
3 New Zealand Super Volcanoes Are Rumbling!
More Snow On The Way For New Zealand
A new blast of cold weather gripped New Zealand over the weekend as the coldest winter in many years continued to affect large swathes of the country. Snow is currently falling in the South Island and in southern parts of the North Island too, with the northern city of Auckland seeing its first snow since 1939. Sunday saw Wellington’s greatest snowfall for 30 years.
July 22 – 25th was previously the coldest snap since 1995, with snowfall causing disruption across the South Island and some parts of the North Island. Today’s snowfall been more widespread, however, and snow was reported down to sea level in the city of Wellington and other parts of the North Island. The New Zealand Met Serviceis predicting falls of 20 – 35 cm above 300 m in the Wellington area, with lesser falls continuing at lower levels.
A Severe Weather Warning issued Sunday evening stated “An extremely cold Read more…
Why Oceania Matters
Since World War II, the United States has devoted few resources to the promotion of peace and stability in Oceania. Instead, it has relied on Australia and New Zealand to maintain Western strategic influence in the region. However, faced with a rising China and other emerging security issues, many analysts believe that the United States can no longer take Oceania for granted. Indeed, without the support of the United States and other regional powers, some question whether Australia and New Zealand will be able to sustain their roles as the sole guarantors of peace and stability in the region indefinitely.
Few regional analysts have been as vocal as Ernest Bower, head of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ recently launched Pacific Partners Initiative (PPI),on the issue.
‘Very few US policymakers understand the importance (of Australian and New Zealander contributions to peace and security in Asia since World War II)…these are important US partners, but their views aren’t sufficiently reflected in our policies. This has resulted in US policy not being robust enough to manage security issues in Asia-Pacific in the next century,’ he says. ‘If we don’t shift the policy focus, then we will Read more…
New Zealand’s Record Snow Storm 25 July 2011
Sunday and Monday the worst winter storm in seventy years hit New Zealand, beginning in the south and moving north. New Zealand is near Antarctica (and the south pole), and during the winter months, Antarctic storms will move north. (It still seems strange to call them “Antarctic storms”, since I’ve always lived with Arctic storms.)
Some places, such as Auckland, haven’t had snow since June 1976. (Remember that winter is during June, July and August here in New Zealand.) People were stranded at airports and ski resorts, especially in the South Island, which was hardest hit.
We received no snow here where we live in Whakatete Bay, just north of Thames, but across the Firth of Thames, the Hunua Ranges (mountains) received a dusting.
Monday is supposed to have been the coldest day of 2011. Here at home, it was the Read more…
Biotech farm to milk mutant transgendered offspring of GM goats
The insatiable lust among genetic engineers to tamper with the natural order has reached new freak-show proportions. Genetic butchers from AgResearch, which NaturalNews recently reported had reluctantly abandoned a 13-year animal cloning operation due to an overwhelming number of animal deformities and deaths (http://www.naturalnews.com/031573_c…), are once again in the news, this time for their plans to milk the transgendered offspring of genetically-engineered (GE) goats.
In a truly disgusting display of “science” gone wild, AgResearch scientists have been intentionally breeding GE goats, most of which are now producing transgendered babies that are essentially females in sterile male bodies. And just like the animals in the company’s previous cloning project, the GE goats’ offspring are Read more…
Big-Time 7.8 Earthquake Strikes Off New Zealand
The earthquake is a 7.8, and it’s that big red dot in the Pacific, near New Zealand.
There are tsunami fears. Warnings are in effect for Tonga and the Kermadec Islands, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
The New Zealand dollar is falling a bit on the news. You can see the big dropoff on the Kiwi on this chart.
More details here from the USGS.
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