A rude shock

We'd not long been asleep last night when we were awakened by a small earthquake. At least we thought it was a small earthquake; but the noise got louder, and the shaking got considerably stronger. The cat flew off the bed to find cover, whilst we just went along for the ride.

And quite a ride it was; Stuff reports:

No major damage has been reported following a deep magnitude-7.0 earthquake that last night shook New Zealand from Bay of Plenty to Canterbury.

GeoNet reported the earthquake hit at 10.36pm on Tuesday. It was centred 230km deep and was 60km south of of the Taranaki town of Opunake.

The first quake was followed nine minutes later by a 4.6 shake at the same depth, 70km south of Opunake.

While there was no major damage or injuries reported, firefighters on a callout in Waverley, near Whanganui, reported seeing cracks in the town's main street and a few "skew-whiff'' chimneys, which the Fire Service said would be further assessed this morning.

A Whanganui woman reported a crack in her ceiling and had gone to stay with her daughter overnight.

Some people were also reported to have evacuated to higher ground on the Horowhenua coast, however a Civil Defence spokesman said there had been a low tsunami risk as the quake struck so deep.

No tsunami warning was issued following the quake.

Marea Faigan, from Lower Lepper Rd, near Inglewood, said she had never felt anything like it in her life.

"It just kept going and going," she said. 

Geonet Rapid (the beta site) initially reported the 'quake as a 6.5 at 270km, but that was later revised upwards to 7.0 at 230km. That makes it almost as strong as the 4 September 2010 'quake (a 7.1) that hit Canterbury, and started a sequence that is still going on.

Fortunately, this one was deep, as earthquakes in the Taranaki Bight tend to be. To the best of our knowledge there's been no fracking out there, out to sea from Wanganui, so there's no need for the Greens to call for an inquiry! Seriously though, it was a wake-up call in the wider sense, and judging by the traffic on Twitter and Facebook in its aftermath, we weren't the only ones to stagger off to our computer and see what people had to say!