Prebble Hill

This hill is covered in limestone boulders, with a gorgeous little river running by. We hiked through a sheep farm in the beginning. Thousands of baby lambs died last week all over New Zealand because of a cold spring storm that hit. Farmers don't have shelters for sheep since they don't usually need them, but during lambing season, the weather can get deadly for the little ones. Unfortunately that cold snap this year made it one of the worst lambing seasons ever.

Giagantic Crack

I spent most of this week (and will spend most of next week) mapping lateral spreading and doing soil testing in Kaiapoi. But the geotechnical department at the university got funding for it from the New Zealand Earthquake Commission- so at least we are getting paid now!
This one crack running through an entire street was over a meter wide and separated houses from garages!

Mount Thomas & Cleaning up Kaiapoi

All of this sand came from just one house!

Cleaning up in Kaiapoi

View from top of Mount Thomas

Canterbury plains meet the mountains

Yesterday we were supposed to go to Peak Hill, but because of a cold front & storm that brought loads of snow to the mountains, we had to change to something closer by. Mount Thomas Recreation Area is only 45 minutes from Christchurch. It has several 3-4 hour trail loops up and around the mountain. With beautiful views from the top, and being so close to town, I'll definitely be back. Today and yesterday the Christchurch tramping club organized work crews to help clean up people's yards in Kaiapoi- a suburb just north of Christchurch that was affected worse than anywhere else by liquefaction during the earthquake. So today I went along to help. The amount of sand in some people's yards was unbelievable! Many houses in that area had to be evicted until the structural damage to them is fixed, which could take a year since there is such a high demand for structural repairs & re-building right now.
Brad spent today and yesterday in golf competitions at his home course (Russley) and another course (MacLeans Island).

Hoon Hay

Llamas

Yesterday I went hiking in the Hoon Hay Scenic reserve, just south of Christchurch. It was a gorgeous day and it actually felt really hot- spring is definitely here! (The winter sure went by fast). Small sections of the trails were destroyed during the earthquake(s) by giant boulders and landslides, but overall everything was in pretty good shape. I was supposed to be on a kayaking course this weekend- but it was cancelled because the pools are closed and the ocean is contaminated from sewage pipes bursting.

Measuring Cracks

University students helping clean up people's yards. (They are all off school for a week and a half. It's so great to see how many people are helping out others, and how much kindness is coming out in everyone. Even people who's houses have cracked in half were so happy to let us come assess the movement. Maybe it's because it could have been so much worse, and people are just so happy it wasn't).

Yesterday and today I was out with a team of grad students and professors from geotechnical engineering and geology assessing displacements and soil liquefaction. This data will be put onto a map by geography grad students (GIS) and we will use it to get directions & quantities of ground movement that occurred in the Christchurch area (important for geotechnical earthquake engineering design). There is still a week or so of work left to do. After I left our area of town where very little damage occurred, I was pretty shocked to see what other people are going through. A guy from the tramping club spent 30 years re-building an historic brick house (it was beautiful!) and him and his wife barely made it out alive when the earthquake hit. A lot of people living near rivers had major liquefaction problems, and displacement of their foundations. It's crazy to see how much fine sand came rushing up through all the tiny cracks in the pavement and around houses (and how much bigger they got). Supposedly the aftershocks may continue for 2 or 3 months. Unfortunately they are causing more damage, and slowing the recovery process. It won't be quick to get the city completely back to normal. But on the other hand, construction companies and contractors that had very little work before now can't keep up with the demand. Every cloud has a silver lining.

University of Canterbury Damage

Damage to Castle Rock (This is not near the university but I had to throw it in. It's a geological landmark in the Port Hills- see Aug. 14th blog posting).

Clearly the library is a really bad place to be during an earthquake! It's a good thing it happened in the middle of the night. (I didn't take these pictures- they are from the UC website. We aren't allowed in any of the campus buildings until next Monday). By the way, we are STILL getting aftershocks- and it's over two days later! A lot of them are quite big too- 4.0-6.0.

Earthquake in Christchurch

Since my mountain biking trip got cancelled this weekend due to the 7.1 magnitude earthquake I thought I'd write about it instead. It occurred at 4:35am in the morning, the epicenter was 30 km west of the city. I was actually already awake- I woke up at 3:30 am with nausea and vomiting that ceased right after the earthquake ended. It could have been the one-hour flu, but I think it was my body anticipating the earthquake- ha ha! Anyways, we got under the doorway to our bedroom when it started. Everything was shaking for several minutes- and afterward there were several aftershocks that felt really strong. The weird part was that you could hear them coming in the distance. We are still getting aftershocks now, many hours later. There was no visible damage to our house or belongings. Some stuff fell over and the power went out for about 6 hours, but that was it. The city is under a state of emergency though, and the damage to the city center was fairly substantial. There were a few injuries, but luckily nobody was killed. It's a good thing the building standards are so high!