Capital Quake

It's been a busy quake week this week. I've experienced abour 12 earth shocks, about 10 imaginary and then 2 biggies for real!

I've been involved in a cross Government planning exercise for a major earthquake - code name Capital Quake. This was a desk exercise which meant we pretended what we'd do if there were an earthquake centred on Wellington. There were times when the situation reports of damage, death and distruction for the 7.8 richter quake centred in Lower Hutt (about 7km from the CBD) felt real enough. It was tiring play acting in the crisis management team for my organisation but lots of learnings which will help improve preparedness for the real thing.

The real thing happened twice yesterday - once during the morning when I was in a meeting and it was a continuous rolling feeling. The odd thing is that when I peered out of the door to see whether we were heading for the hills, my colleagues were head down not really noticing. It only freaked me slightly as this was the first time I've been in our cronky old 1960's building that only two days before in our exercise was rendered a pile of rubble.

Last night we had another which rattled the house and woke up both MT and I. Both these were 5.5 and not too far from Wellington which is pretty unnerving. People say it's best that there are lots of little ones to avoid the big one so I have to take it at face value.

For more information on our quake experiences http://www.geonet.org.nz/recent_quakes.html

Must get those radio batteries and extra stock of baked beans in!!