The rate of aftershocks following Saturday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake appears to be lower than usual for a quake of that size, but people around damaged buildings in Canterbury should still be taking extreme care, says an expert.
The aftershocks could be big – within one order of magnitude of the original quake – so there is still the chance of a magnitude 6 shake hitting the un-reinforced masonry around Christchurch and in surrounding towns of mid-Canterbury.
Nearly 100 aftershocks have hit so far, the biggest of them rating at magnitude 5.5, and some have come from different directions from the original shake.
“It is still possible that we’ll have a magnitude 6 in the next week, and people ought to be aware of that, particularly if they are around structures which are already damaged,” said the manager of the geohazards monitoring section which runs the GeoNet at GNS Science, Ken Gledhill.
“For a shallow earthquake like this, they will go on for weeks,” Dr Gledhill told NZPA.
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Updates:
2:32 pm EDT, September 6th, 2010 — New Zealand earthquake ‘damaged 100,000 homes’