National Advisory: Tsunami - Potential Threat to New Zealand

There's been a 7.8 earthquake off the Kermadec Islands at 7:03 this morning. It's size and the realatively shallow depth of 48km means that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre has issued a tsunami warning for New Zealand.


The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management has just issued a National Advisory: tsunami - Potential Threat to NZ - which means that our scientists are currently rapidly reviewing the information, to see whether there really is a tsunami threat from this event.


Stay tuned for further official updates from the National Warning System. The National Crisis Management Centre has activated for this event.


If a tsunami has been generated PTWC gives expected arrival times of 0852am for East Cape.

Severe gales expected tomorrow

The MetService has issued a Severe Weather Warning for severe gales for much of the country, including the Wellington region.

A very strong westerly airstream is developing over New Zealand. On Thursday, a cold front is expected to cross the South Island, preceded by a strong northwest airstream.

Westerly winds are expected to reach severe gale force this afternoon (Wednesday) in exposed parts of Auckland, Coromandel Peninsula,Taranaki, Wanganui, Manawatu, Nelson west of Motueka, and also the east of the North Island from Hastings to Masterton.

Winds should ease below severe gale in most places late tonight. But the strong winds are likely to persist in the east of the North Island until around dawn on Thursday.

However, in Wellington and Wairarapa, between about noon Thursday and 2am Friday, expect northwest winds to reach 65 km/h in exposed places, with gusts 120 km/h.

These winds have the potential to lift roofs, cause damage to trees and powerlines, and make driving hazardous.

Gusty northwesterlies are likely to affect these areas for several days, with winds possibly reaching severe gale at times.

Central North Island quake

A lot of us in Porirua felt that one!

Information just through from Geonet:

Time: 3:36pm
Magnitude - 6.5
Mercalli Magnitude - 6
Focal Depth - 150km (a deep one)
Location - 30km west of Taupo

http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3540736g.html

Get text alerts on your mobile phone

The Porirua Emergency Management Office uses Twitter as one of the ways it sends out emergency alerts to the public. These can be received as SMS text messages.

Text alerts are free, but signing up will cost you four texts at your standard rate.

Unfortunately, if you're on 2Degrees, you won't be able to receive them. Sorry!

You will receive a few test messages a year and any other message will be a real alert.

Alerts may include:

• major road closures


• major water or power outages


• severe weather warnings


• tsunami warnings


• earthquake information on local quakes


• and any other large emergencies

If you receive an emergency alert, forward it to your friends.

Sign up now!

Wait for a reply after each text sent. If you already receive tweets to your mobile phone, go to step 5.

1. Text the word "start" to 8987.



2. Reply with the word "signup".



3. Think of a unique username. (You won't need to remember it again, so you could use your name followed by some random characters, eg "Jim456bob".)



4. Reply with your chosen username. (If you are already on Twitter, use your existing username and it will ask you for your password)



5. Send / Reply "follow poriruaemo" to 8987.

It's Easy - in Chinese!

It's Easy - Get prepared for an emergency - now available in Chinese!

We know that English is not always the first language that people speak in our region, but we want everyone to know just how easy it is to prepare for an emergency, so our award-winning preparedness booklet has been translated into Chinese.

Hopefully this will be just the first other language we translate it into, with more languages to come in the future.

Image links to the pdf (960kb)

A quake of our own

Apparently we had an earthquake of our very own today at 8:13 pm.
Moment Magnitude 3.5 (we don't actually use the Richter Scale any more, moment magnitude measures the energy released)
Modified Mercalli 4 (measures the amount of shaking at the surface - effectively the damaged caused, or what people observed to be happening)
Focal depth 33km down, and located 10km North of Porirua.

I didn't feel a thing, did anyone else notice it?

Volcanic Ash - Im in ur airspace, groundin ur planez

For those of you who aren't geeky enough to get the title - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kosmonaut/IM_IN_UR_BASE_KILLIN_UR_D00DZ

Anyway...

Volcanoes are usually on the list of disaster-causing natural hazards that any 6 year old from Titahi Bay School or Cannons Creek School would name. In the earthquakey-lava-erupting sense, they aren't so much of a problem for the Wellington region, though Ruapehu might occasionally ruin your ski season. Our big problem comes from volcanic ash.

From local volcanoes you can get ash coating everything in reach - like this example from near Chaiten in Chile causing serious problems for agriculture.



And then you can get volcanoes in other continents spewing out ash into the atmosphere, which can then be blown across the world, creating a hazard for any aircraft trying to fly through it.

Last year we had an ash cloud thrown up by Eyjafjallajökull (pronounced badly by at least one person as "I'll have a yogurt yurtle"), in Iceland shutting down aircraft travel over much of Europe - costing billion of dollars in lost revenue, and travellers having to work out other ways to get to where they needed to be. Another Icelandic volcano, Grimsvotn, is disrupting their local air traffic right now, and we have the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile doing exactly the same thing to us, all the way over here in NZ.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5144738/Ash-cloud-too-much-of-a-risk-say-Qantas-Jetstar

Our New Zealand volcanoes would have a similar effect when they decide to erupt next.

Unfortunately for us, Chile's volcanoes put out more ash than Iceland's, so this ash cloud may be disrupting our local air traffic for quite some time yet, so look out for low-flying kiwis trying to stay below it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/14/us-chile-volcano-idUSTRE75D6QK20110614

Some awesome photos from Chile - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1395070/Thousands-flee-homes-flights-grounded-Chilean-volcano-sends-plumes-ash-showering-down.html

More quakes

I was about to make a post about the volcanic ash problem, but then Christchurch was hit by a series of large aftershocks, the largest at 2:20pm measuring magnitude 6.0, and 8 on the Mercalli scale which measures the intensity of the shaking.

Once again, social media like Twitter and Facebook have been providing rapid reports of what's going on, leaving the news media to play catch-up. The Twitter feed on the article on stuff.co.nz is pretty interesting reading.

First hand reports of the effects of the quakes can be quite vital - and a great way to know that your friends are okay enough to be typing and texting. Sometimes inaccurate information gets forwarded around, so it generally pays to verify that before taking it as gospel.

So far there are reports of more liquefaction, power, phone, & water outages. A few buildings have collapsed, but they were, for the most part, red stickered after the previous quakes. The Red Zone has been expanded back out again, as the already unstable buildings have been further destabilised.

Here in Porirua we're making sure that our staff are ready & able to return to Christchurch to lend a hand like we did after the February quake, or help locally with any regional response.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-earthquake/5137773/June-13-quakes-Latest-information

Unlucky Lego Man

Some absolutely fabulous emergency preparedness videos by Chloe & Sophie Crowe from Ngaio School in Wellington.









Fantastic work, guys! I think we could all learn a thing or two from Unlucky Lego Man.

Enjoy Queen's Birthday Weekend

If you are heading out of town for the long weekend, remember to take extra care on the roads. Don't forget, if you get caught driving 5km over the speed limit, you will get a ticket!

The weather looks like it's going to be pretty variable around the country - hopefully it's nice where you're going, but keep an eye on the forecast.

And finally, take survival items for the kids and you on the journey... food, games, drink, blankets (especially for the Desert Road), music and lots of patience.