[Land-speed] N Z link

[23weldon]

Chris - I really feel for you guys.  Life just turned into a big mess for a 
lot of good people down there.
>From what I read and see Christchurch experienced about the same hit that we 
took in 1989 where I live in California in the Richter 6.9 1989 Loma Prieta 
quake.  Our hillside house was 5 miles from the epicenter and 7 miles from 
the hypocenter underground.  The shock waves came up an angle, lifted my 
1200 pound milling machine off the floor and put everything else in my shop 
on the floor a meter deep.  My welding tanks fell against the driver's door 
of my 32 and made a mess out of it.  Other than that the cars and shop were 
a mess but very little was broken. The house was hit hard and took about 
$50K damage.  Took 3 years to finish the fixing,the first  year and a half 
were spent waiting for the local county planning department to lift the ban 
on rebuilding in our neighborhood.
I don't know how such things go in your country but if it is anything like 
here in California my advice if your home is damaged is to do anything you 
can to keep officials and any other nosy good samaritans away from your 
house and property.  That includes media types and university students or 
volunteers doing damage surveys.  Us guys who build cars have a pretty good 
idea what is dangerous and what isn't and can usually react appropriately. 
I was lucky.  I live 130 meters from the street down a hill and behind 
trees.  No officials came by my place to look.  A couple of university 
geology students showed up a week later and said they were recording signs 
of land movement and fissures and such. OK with naive me.  There was one 5 
meter long by a third of a meter wide and one meter deep crack in a hillside 
spot 75 feet west of the house.  This was an area that had been filled a 
couple of meters deep when the house was built.   When the county building 
officials paraded around a map of "geologic hazards" in our area 6 months 
later the crack was drawn as a major land collapse several times the actual 
size right next to the house.  And it was official gospel with the county 
geologist's signature on it.
You may want to pass along my account here to friends on the South Island.
Ed Weldon

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris R Harris" <yesford at clear.net.nz>
To: "Bryan Savage" <b.a.savage at wildblue.net>; "Wester Potter" 
<wester6935 at comcast.net>
Cc: "LAND SPEED LIST" <land-speed at autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Land-speed] N Z link
> All fine here, I live in the middle of the North Is on the east coast. 
> Christchurch is middle of South Is, also on the east coast.
> This is their 2nd quake in recent times so lots of heavy equipment on 
> hand, civil defense organisation doing great job and authorities in 
> general have situation well under control. .................
> Chris Harris...........NZed.