Deadly Christchurch earthquake came from out of the blue, says seismologist Bill FryDeadly Christchurch earthquake came from out of the blue, says seismologist Bill Fry

NEW Zealand was completely caught off-guard by yesterday's devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake. 

 

A day earlier it was predicted there was just a 4 per cent chance of an earthquake of that magnitude hitting the country within two weeks.

"We didn't know it was coming today," said seismologist Dr Bill Fry.

"We can't really predict these things, we only go on the likelihood, and as of yesterday we could not have expected it. It's terrible.

"It is an aftershock of the quake we saw in September, but this is big enough that it will have its own aftershock sequences.

 

"The September event was longer in duration but this had much more intense ground shaking."

Dr Gary Gibson, from Melbourne University's School of Earth Sciences, said despite being a lower magnitude, yesterday's quake was deadly because of where it hit.

"The epicentre was at shallow depth under Christchurch, so many people were within 10 to 20km of the fault rupture," Dr Gibson said.
"The magnitude 7.0 earthquake on September 4 was 30-40km west of Christchurch."
New Zealand experiences up to 15,000 tremors every year, sitting on the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, known as the Ring of Fire.

 

"Earthquakes larger than magnitude 6.0 occur about annually in New Zealand," Dr Gibson said.
"(But) this is by far the largest earthquake to have occurred in the Christchurch region in historic time."
Dr Fry said it would take many months for Christchurch to recover from yesterday's horrific quake.
"They'll be feeling big aftershocks from this event for many weeks. They are resilient people so I guess they will recover, but it's just absolutely terrible."