Hard News: The new wave
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I'm put off "Idyllic Beach Front Retreat" for some reason......
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Ross, I'm still noting that a lot of smaller more isolated spots are basically not returning much information. That was a huge part of the earlier unaccounted casualties in 2004 - isolated villages which were pretty much wiped clean out, leaving so few survivors that no one could even be sure how many had been there in the first place.
Carol, White Island would be extremely concerning, being so close. All the warning systems in the world can't help if time between earthquake and tsunami is only a few minutes. I think this is what happened in Samoa - it's not like people were unaware of the danger, it's just that it happened so damned fast. That's why general public knowledge of what rapidly receding water means is a good idea.
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Back in 2003 there was a move by local residents and developers to bulldoze the dunes along Christchurch's Brighton-North Beach foreshore in order to 'enhance' the area. Since the tsunami event of 2004 they've been rather quiet.
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Back when I worked on the newspaper in Whakatane, the seismograph (or whatever its called) on White Island kept breaking.
The DSIR officially blamed the fallout from the constant eruptions, but then the seismothingy on land also kept breaking.
One of the worst shakes we had there - right on deadline - I phoned up the DSIR guy in Rotorua (while still sitting under my desk). He says "oh, so you felt it there too?" and asks me more questions about the strength of the shake for his bloody report.
I think GNS do things better now.
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Hmmm....The Science Mantra: Must get data... Must get data.
Wow - You felt it too!!! Who published first???
BTW. Did anyone hear the Civil Defence guy on Checkpoint last night in response to the Tutukaka harbour eye witness of a few minutes earlier?
"We expect their local CD to modify that information and publish it based on their local knowledge how the local topography behaves."
and
"The responsibility for understanding how water behaves in Tutukaka harbour or in the Marlborough Sounds rests largely with the local regional council people."
Eh?
Ummm....last data point? 1960......I think was the last time an event might have been useful for anywhere in NZ.
Put a dollar on it that GNS will be given funding to investigate "The local phenomena".
And the lesson may be that it might be useful to at least wait until the wave has departed ALL of NZ shores before dropping the warning.
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Ross, I'm still noting that a lot of smaller more isolated spots are basically not returning much information. That was a huge part of the earlier unaccounted casualties in 2004
Yes, you're right there. But, and it's a big but, this isn't Indonesia plus a number of other countries. We're not discussing the fourth-most-populated nation on earth, we're talking about a bunch of islands with a combined population smaller than the final death toll from the '04 tsunami. The scope for such massive numbers of fatalities is greatly reduced, and that's assisted by the fact that people reacted to the quake quickly and got to higher ground.
Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Is it likely? Maybe, but the population is significantly smaller.
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Well Ross, some estuaries rush water out pretty fast most of the time, so I'm guessing that's what they mean by 'local knowledge of the local topography'. You could be forgiven upon seeing water draining from the basin enclosed by the Motorway/Rosebank Rd/Gt North Rd, to think it was abnormal for sea water to be moving so fast, but it does that every day at half-tide.
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Matthew, I'm clearly not saying that the casualty totals will be in the same ball park. But the way in which information comes out after this kind of disaster could be very similar. Population has got nothing to do with that. It could take days for the counts to settle, and they could leap dramatically as each new discover of some wrecked settlement is made.
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I give you that a lot of people don't much care about foreign disasters, rating them less interesting than local weather conditions.
Haven't been following this much, but I reckon the number of Samoans living here makes it a more "local" story than most exotic disaster pron.
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I think that TVNZ (& TV3) let us down yesterday morning. They should have continued broadcasting news at least until the warning was withdrawn - it was a national emergency and TVNZ are a public broadcaster.
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it was a national emergency and TVNZ are a public broadcaster.
You'd expect that. But no, they're a commercial broadcaster, like TV3. It just happens that they are owned by the Government (you and I), and the Government has decided that maximising their profit is in the best public interest. Who are we to disagree?
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I'm no expert, but I would have thought that frequent updates on "ohmigod, is a tsunami coming to hit New Zealand soon or not?" might have drawn in the punters more than... the normal good morning type fare.
Even a bit of an update at each ad break, which would recognise that there's not enough news to fill several hours, and an adjustment of the TV show to allow the time would seem sensible.
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3410,
the Government has decided that maximising their profit is in the best public interest.
Profit which is, by the way, 89.2 per cent [!] down on last year, "largely due to a $17.1 million fall in advertising revenue..."
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I think GNS do things better now
Considerably better if i do say so myself. (although keeping gear running on an actively erupting volcano as White Island was during the 80's and 90's takes a far amount of effort).
Prior to GeoNet it took several days to locate an earthquake - which often involved farmers sending in data tapes from the backblocks. Now days we update a realtime shaking map every minute on the GeoNet website and often have an earthquake location out within 20mins of it occuring. -
Back in 2003 there was a move by local residents and developers to bulldoze the dunes along Christchurch's Brighton-North Beach foreshore in order to 'enhance' the area.
Yes, because that worked a treat at Omaha.
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Bloody hell. Those poor bastards. As if they haven't been through enough, already.
To quote myself (from Twitter):
5 years after the Tsunami I can not even begin to imagine the horror these folks in Sumatra felt yesterday, even though Padang was spared 2004.
It did however, suffer a fairly hefty tsunami in 1797 and in Indonesia these things stay ingrained in the popular memory.
Anak Krakatua is rumbling badly again right now too just to cheer us all up.
The mad Imams are saying it's all because Indonesia is not devout enough....
I was wondering how close Simon was to that one.
All fine here thanks Hillary, we're about 1500km from Padang. But we did get our big shock last week in Bali. I wasn't here but I'm told it was fairly scary. I was here for the previous two in September.
Given the way that buildings are constructed here (the Balinese build beautiful temples but everything else is shockingly slapped together) I'm keeping out of anything that's more than one storey high right now.
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A 6.9 quake has been reported 280km from the epicentre of the last one, according to Granny. No reports of injuries at this point.
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And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The (Pacific) Ring Of FireHow about the fact that warming of the sea and atmosphere results in increased volcanic activity and causes other changes in the earth's crust: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327273.800
Auckland has a plume below it that seems like it will react faster to changes in the crust than tectonic-plate volcanoes like Ruapehu. 100km down the magma is super-heated and when it can it breaks out to the surface forming a new volcano. So it's unlikely that one of the existing 49 will go up. Just a new one somewhere in-between them all. What great news! http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/volcanoes/nzvolcanoes/aucklandprint.htm
I preferred parts of Omaha in 1978 - they hadn't destroyed the other half of it at that point. I'm astounded that the council let them build the houses on the hill at the end overlooking the beach. It used to at least have a quiet end where you could "get away from it all". Now you've got to walk to Pink Beach (or just not bother). The best part about Omaha is still the great cockle bed on the estuary side of the peninsula - and the fact that Warkworth doesn't get volcanoes or many earthquakes - hence the satellite station was built there.
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So it's unlikely that one of the existing 49 will go up. Just a new one somewhere in-between them all.
I'd long been under the impression that it's accepted that, in Auckland's case, the volcanic devils we know are of interest only for historical and urban planning reasons?
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The existing ones won't re-erupt but a new volcano will appear somewhere else in the zone. Rangitoto happened 600 years ago and contained 59% of all the volcanic material in Auckland - ten times bigger than any other Auckland volcano. The scientists conclude that the next one is overdue and may be as big or bigger. The fact that climate change is also affecting the whole scenario makes volcanoes even more of an issue... and other than the Auckland Museum's marvellous exhibit we seem to be ignoring the elephant in the room.
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Andre
The fact that climate change is also affecting the whole scenario makes volcanoes even more of an issue..
Just interested in how climate change can be linked to volcanes
I am aware that volcanoes can change the climate but the other way round or are you thinking of the raising of the sea level -
The fact that climate change is also affecting the whole scenario makes volcanoes even more of an issue... and other than the Auckland Museum's marvellous exhibit we seem to be ignoring the elephant in the room.
What exactly are you getting at with the climate change, out of curiosity? The main interaction of volcanoes and climate change is for volcanoes to inhibit warming.
(And if a volcano big enough to have a noticeable impact on the rate of climate warming erupts in Auckland, I cannot begin to emphasise how fucked we are.)
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Woops
"Great" minds think alike Lucy, note the times -
The mad Imams are saying it's all because Indonesia is not devout enough....
Perhaps they've been reading David Keys's Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World, in which he suggests an earlier eruption of Krakatau as the culprit behind the historical global climatic catastrophe of around A.D. 535. With the climate-induced collapse of agriculture in Yemen, Muhammad's forebears upped stumps and moved to Mecca.The breakdown of civilisation in the ensuing decades created ideal conditions for an enterprising prophet, and to cut to the point, no Krakatau, no Islam.
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blows against the empire...?
no Krakatau, no Islam
If the mountain will not come to Muhammad,
Muhammad will go to the mountain...?more adjusting to the inevitable...
Krakatau venting... - history repeating?re climate adjustment by Vulcan -
aren't Volcanoes great generators of CO2?
and smoke and uther particulate screening...
and the pacific has it's own superplume...
I wonder if it could even threaten Mururoa - ooops!
I also wonder if yellowstone is "doming" more at the moment as well...big cycles all big cycles
(and I ain't talking Penny Farthings here...)
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