Japonica

Among the aftershocks was an earthquake this morning that was much closer to Christchurch than the others have been. It caused more destruction and damaged some services that had been fixed. Not surprisingly it terrified people who were already traumatised by the big quake. To make things worse the experts are saying the aftershocks may go on for more than two months.

The Government is laying on all sorts of aid to assist families and businesses to recover, but it is all going to take time.

Thank you to all who have left supportive comments. They are very much appreciated, but remember that, apart from losing a bit of sleep, I have been unaffected by the earthquakes.

For those interested- a video of the earthquake fault on farmland as seen from the air. Note the displacement where one side of the fault has moved in one direction while the other side has moved in the opposite direction, with diagonal tearing between. Hedges are no longer straight.

And here is a site that displays records of the last 30 earthquakes in NZ. You will see that most of them are in Canterbury, and in the last 24 hours.

This time lapse map illustrates the position, size and depth of each Canterbury earthquake from Saturday morning, and it is updated with each new quake. I live not far inland from Darfield.