Powerful New Zealand earthquake sees South Island residents warned to avoid coast | EUROtoday

People in New Zealand have been suggested to avoid the shore after an earthquake measuring magnitude 6.8 struck off the coast of South Island on Tuesday.

The quake struck at a depth of 33km off the southwest coast of the island’s Fiordland nationwide park, and about 160km northwest of Snares Islands, at 2.43pm native time. Though officers issued a “tsunami advisory”, it mentioned no evacuation orders have been mandatory except directed by native authorities.

The discover issued by the National Emergency Management Agency warned folks to maneuver off boats and preserve out of the water, whereas including that “coastal inundation (flooding of land areas near the shore) is not expected as a result of this event”.

It mentioned distant elements of Fiordland’s coast have been the most probably to be affected. “Strong currents and surges can injure and drown people. There is a danger to swimmers, surfers, people fishing, and anyone in or near the water close to shore,” the company warned.

“People in or near the sea in the following areas should move out of the water, off beaches and shore areas and away from harbours, marinas, rivers and estuaries.

“People on boats, live-aboards and at marinas ought to go away their boats/vessels and transfer onto shore. Do not return to boats except instructed by officers.”

The areas under threat cover the west coast of South Island, from Milford Sound to Puysegur Point.

There was no threat of a tsunami to Southland’s coast, said Emergency Management Southland civil defence controller Aly Curd.

Australia’s national weather bureau also confirmed that there was no tsunami threat to the mainland, islands or territories.

Thousands of people in New Zealand reported feeling the earthquake. “We had issues fall off shelf. The outside wood desk dancing,” a user posted on Facebook, according to the New Zealand Herald.

“Students were evacuated to a field and clearing area and we were required to walk to the old hospital where buses would come in due course,” a Te Waewae Bay local teaching in Riverton told the outlet. “A few of us are at the pub sharing stories.”

Tuatapere Four Square owner Mark Hewton said the earthquake hit suddenly. “It was a really mushy rolling earthquake. It wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t sufficient to trigger any injury that I’m conscious of,” he told RNZ News.

“All the workers felt it and it was undoubtedly sufficient to make you cease what you have been doing and make you concentrate on getting below a door or one thing.

“We haven’t felt one like that for quite a wee while.”

New Zealand lies on the seismically lively “Ring of Fire”, a 40,000-km arc of volcanoes and ocean trenches girdling a lot of the Pacific Ocean.

Experts mentioned the earthquake struck a area the place we solely have restricted scientific understanding however which carries a big tsunami danger. It occurred close to the Puysegur Trench, a tectonic plate boundary the place the Australian plate descends beneath the Pacific plate.

This boundary extends over 800km southward from South Island into the distant Southern Ocean, about 400km west of the Auckland Islands.

“There is still much we don’t know about this area,” seismologist Dr Finn Illsley-Kemp advised the New Zealand Herald. Researchers from Victoria University, together with his colleagues, have been learning the area. “Compared to other areas, it has received far less scientific attention, leaving uncertainties about its tectonic behaviour – yet it has produced some of our most powerful earthquakes.”