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New Zealand: 7.8-magnitude quake rocks south, triggers tsunami
Story highlights
- Tsunami hits country's eastern coast
- Quake struck northeast of Christchurch
(CNN)A
powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake has jolted New Zealand's South Island
and triggered a tsunami, sending people running into the streets in a
panic.
The quake struck around 50 kilometers (around 30 miles) northeast of the city of Christchurch just after midnight local time on Monday, the US Geological Survey reported, and triggered waves of 2.49 meters above usual tide levels, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said.
"This
is highest tsunami wave (that) New Zealand has seen in at least 38
years," said Philip Duncan of Weather Watch New Zealand.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
But
New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defense warned that the worst may be
yet to come. The agency said on Twitter that the country's entire east
coast was at threat and could expect waves of between three and five
meters.
"Move inland or to higher ground immediately," the warning said.
Initial
waves may not be the largest and they could continue for several hours,
the Civil Defense posted, as tsunami-warning sirens wailed across the
island.
"The first tsunami waves
have arrived but it is too early to know what damage or casualties there
may have been. Further waves should be expected and may be larger or
more dangerous," the Civil Defense Ministry said in a statement. "New Zealanders should stay off the beaches, stay out of the water, and not go sightseeing."
New
Zealand is a South Pacific nation of islands, the two largest being the
North and South islands, which are home to most of the population.
Slightly more than 1 million people live in the South, while the North
has more than 3 million.
Guests at the Amora Hotel in Wellington gather in a carpark after fleeing their rooms.
'It's going to be a long night'
In Christchurch, memories of a devastating 6.3-magnitude earthquake
in 2011 are still fresh for many. That quake killed 185 people and
injured thousands, and reduced swathes of the city's historic area to
rubble.
Damage on a Wellington street after the quake.
"The
land has been very peaceful for many, many months. So this is bringing
back all the rare memories," Chet Wah, owner of Designer Cottage B&B
in Christchurch, told CNN.
"I just checked with all the guests. They are alright. It is scary. It's going to be a long night."
Christchurch, on the South Island's eastern coast, has a population of over 340,000 people, the most recent census shows.
Powerful aftershocks
Images
on social media showed shattered windows, toppled grocery items on the
floor of a supermarket and water sloshing back and forth in swimming
pools from different parts of the country.
Mark
A'Court, owner of the Fresh Choice in Nelson City, posted security
video footage on Facebook showing wine bottles falling from shelves at
his store.
A photo of a road with a deep, wide crack down its middle served as sobering evidence of the temblor's force.
A large fissure formed on Kaikoura Road north of Christchurch.
"This
is the strongest [earthquake] I've ever felt," Tamara Hunt told CNN.
She was with her husband at their home in Whanganui when the earthquake
struck.
"It started off so small,
like the cat moving in the bed, but then it started building and I had
to run to the door. Stuff in the house was falling over and the doors
were swaying really bad," she said. "Then we decided to get out, and
that's when we saw our pool had lost a lot of water. The earthquake went
on for two minutes."
The South
Island has been hit by a flurry of aftershocks, according to the USGS
and New Zealand's Geonet service, some with a magnitude above 6.0.
Officials from the island's second-largest town, Dunedin, called a state
of emergency there.
Life in a 'collision zone'
Residents around the epicenter reported shaking for minutes that sent grocery items flying from shelves.
The
USGS initially reported the quake's magnitude at 7.4 at a depth of just
10 kilometers -- shallow enough to cause serious destruction to the
immediate surrounding area. It later revised the quake strength to 7.8,
but changed its depth to 23 (14.2 miles) kilometers, giving more of a
buffer between the epicenter and the Earth's surface.
New
Zealand is regularly hit by earthquakes as it sits in a "collision
zone" between the Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates. It is
part of the Pacific's "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped belt around the ocean's edges where many earthquakes and volcano eruptions occur.
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