Busy, Busy, Busy

Well Wednesday has rolled around yet again and I have not posted anything for a week. Obviously it has been a busy week for me otherwise I would have been in here like a shot posting some rubbish for you to read. Not only busy in my employment I have also been busy around the house, creating peace treaties between the two great warring nations of my son and daughter, finally mowing the lawns and other general housework and maintenance.

My writing has not been neglected, I have been re-reading BOAS up to the point I stopped writing those months ago in readiness to once again start rejigging the last draft into a more hilarious version with more character development and plot etc. I have some wonderful ideas and humorous additions to the story, now all I need to do is put them down in bytes.

On the earthquake front, nothing major over the past week, though Christchurch residents are still being bombarded with smallish aftershocks (3 - 4.6) and I know they are sick and tired of them. A telling sign that there are Christchurch residents on the edge is the latest quake felt locations on Geonet (via Google Maps). These are reports logged by the public on the Geonet website who felt the quake. This quake was centred in the Southern Alps and obviously on the Alpine Fault, which is quite removed from the faults responsible for the quakes in Christchurch (though I think they talk to each other, there always seems to be a large quake in Christchurch a few days after a 4.0 or high quake on the Alpine Fault). Well anyway, this earthquake was 4.1 and centred just North-East of Mount Cook/Aoraki which was 160 Km (100 miles) South-West  of Christchurch and 120Km West of here. 30 – 50 Km (30 miles) South-East of the West Coast towns. If you follow the link above you will see that the felt reports are from the West Coast Towns and Christchurch, but no felt reports from Timaru or any other eastern towns closer to the earthquake than Christchurch. I can just imagine those people in Christchurch frozen to their seats analysing every little creak, every little bump in fear of another large quake. This is not a life for anyone, but a life being endured by the hardy soles up there in the “Garden City.”

Another interesting factoid about the quake is even though Christchurch has been shaken badly and as a result a few buildings in Timaru are condemned, Timaru itself is still deemed a low earthquake risk area. Our local paper seems quite upset that Timaru’s earthquake rating remains low as they have recently been running stories about the risk our huge percentage of brick buildings (was the highest in New Zealand), especially those in the main centre, being a death trap. What they forget is that Timaru is not on a fault line (as far as the experts know) whereas Christchurch was always deemed to be on fault lines even though their exact nature was unknown. We may get shaken from earthquakes further afield but we are very unlikely to experience one on our doorstep like Christchurch has several times this year. Plus the ground structure of Timaru is totally the opposite to the sandy, swampy ground that Christchurch is built on. I agree that we should keep buildings in good condition so blocks of stone and bricks don’t fall on the public below, but we needn’t go overboard in suddenly demolishing every brick building around “just in case.” I pray that the council is wiser than the reporters of the local paper.

I think I will need to go into the history of Timaru in another blog so as to explain the high percentage of brick buildings. It involves a fire and a local industry.

 

Have a great Wednesday over there in the rest of the world.

 

Cheers and Blessings

 

Peter