Earth shifted 11 feet by New Zealand quake

Telegraph:

The magnitude 7.1 quake on Friday night in New Zealand was larger than the one that killed 200,000 people in Haiti this year and appeared to have opened a new fault line.

Mark Quigley, a geology professor leading a team investigating the cause of the quake, said: "One side of the earth has lurched to the right."

“Up to 11 feet in some places has been thrust up. The long linear fracture on the earth’s surface does things like break apart houses, break apart roads.

"We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.”

Much of the centre of Christchurch remained sealed off and under curfew for a second night on Sunday.

More than 500 buildings have been badly damaged. Two men were seriously hurt by falling masonry but there have been no reports of deaths.

Although it was known that the quake was caused by the Pacific and Australian techtonic plates colliding, the existence of the “blind” faultline had come as a surprise, Dr Quigley said.

There had previously been no physical sign of it on the surface.

Gale-force winds tearing at unstable structures were adding to their fears and heavy rain was forecast to compound the misery.

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When the earth tosses the surface about, it scrambles liberalism too. They can't blame the quake on their political opponents so they switch over to trying to blame them for things like building codes or failed warning systems. The liberals have been governing New Zealand for sometime so they have only themselves to blame for the building codes and warning systems. It must be as big a dilemma as teh quake itself.