KAIKŌURA

II N N TT H H E E WW A A K K E E OFOF THETHE QUAKEQUAKE

The Kaikōura Earthquake was better documented and measured than any natural event in our history. As the

data streams in, scientists are scrambling to decode its At Waipapa Bay, locals described hearing the roar of hidden meanings and answer some burning questions water running off this raised platform as the seabed surged upwards by 5.5 metres—at three kilometres of Antipodean geology: How does seismic energy jump per second. Events like this raise mountain ranges and lift New Zealand from the sea, but have only occurred from one fault to another? Why were so many involved twice before in recorded history, during the 1931 in this earthquake? And what can it teach us so we are Napier and 1855 Wairarapa earthquakes. “We’re seeing the landscape forming before our eyes,” says GNS better prepared for the next one? principal scientist Kelvin Berryman.

WRITTEN BY KATE EVANS PHOTOGRAPHED BY ROB SUISTED

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Roads and hillsides subsided without warning in those few minutes in the middle of the night. Could we have seen it coming? Science is still a long way from being able to forecast earthquakes, says GNS earthquake geologist Russ Van Dissen. “To be able to predict an earthquake you’d need to know a whole lot more than we do now about how these processes work.” So is anywhere in New Zealand safe? Not really, he says, but there are things everyone can do to prepare. “Instead of it being Russian roulette, you can wear a helmet.”

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This formerly flat, straight railway line illustrates the massive displacement caused when the Kekerengu Fault split to the sea. The land shifted both sideways and vertically each side of the rupture, the changing topography forming a brand new wetland that’s already attracting waterbirds. “This is a fast-moving fault that makes earthquakes quite frequently, every 300 years or so,” says Van Dissen. Parts of the Kekerengu slipped by as much as 12 metres. “Globally speaking, that’s huge,” he says.

AST SUMMER, EARTHQUAKE geologists Russ sunlight. The results confirmed their suspi- Van Dissen and Tim Little dug a 15-metre-long cions—the Kekerengu Fault had a very fast trench across a paddock on North Canterbury’s slip rate, and had ruptured three times in the Kekerengu Fault, hoping to answer a question past 1200 years… Make that four. that had long eluded scientists: how often did Less than a year after Van Dissen and Little it rupture, and how far did it slide when it did? dug across where they thought the fault would They suspected it was one of the fastest-mov- be, the Kekerengu came to life—one of at least ing faults in the country, and new dating tech- nine faults ignited in the magnitude 7.8 niques gave them a chance to find out for sure. Kaikōura Earthquake on November 14. Their team spent several weeks in the field, “Our study found it was a very active fault tracing the fault’s story into the past. They by New Zealand standards—but we couldn’t cut down through the earth in a series of steps, have told you it was going to move in a few taking soil samples from the walls, until they months’ time!” Van Dissen says. were four metres below the surface in a muddy Though they had filled in their survey hole at the heart of the fault. trench, a faint rectangular outline remained Though Van Dissen works for GNS Science in the grassy paddock. Now, though, it is split and Little for Victoria University, they’ve been clean down the middle by a scar of tortured best friends since they met while making a soil, the far side ripped sideways along the hill, similar trench on the two the two halves nine metres apart. decades ago, sharing a taste for beer and music around the campfire at the end of a day’s work (Van Dissen on guitar, Little on harmonica). “WHAT UNKNOWN AFFINITY / Lies between They have both spent their professional mountain and sea / In country crumpled like lives trying to understand a handful of con- an unmade bed,” asked Denis Glover in his nected faults that score Marlborough and 1953 poem Arawata Bill. North Canterbury’s farms and river valleys; The poet was thinking of gold, but the to infer from faint echoes left in the landscape answer could equally be plate tectonics, the what happens when they detonate in sudden great unifying theory of geological science movement. New Zealand’s historical record that rose to prominence a decade after Glover is short—we’ve had only a handful of really published his poem sequence about the old large earthquakes since records began in the prospector. 1800s—so figuring out their patterns relies This country is crumpled by the shoving, on this kind of ‘palaeo-seismic’ research. straining might of two great sections of the In February, the geologists sent the samples Earth’s outer shell: these islands are the result taken from the trench for dating. They use of their meeting. both radiocarbon and ‘optically stimulated The Australian Plate dives beneath the luminescence’ techniques, which can detect Pacific Plate off Fiordland, collides with and how long ago a mineral particle last saw crunches past it through the ,

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then rides over the Pacific Plate off the North Lower Hutt. “It was packed; there was a lot For the geologists who had spent decades Island’s east coast, forcing it down into the of adrenalin pumping.” detecting the subtle traces of earthquakes molten mantle. Marlborough is scrunched in By 9AM, Litchfield and a colleague were hundreds or thousands of years old, here was the middle—and its complex network of faults strapping themselves into a helicopter to assess a chance to see, raw and up close, the effects carries the plate-boundary movement from the damage from the air—a little apprehen- of one on landscapes they knew so well—the the Alps through to Cook Strait at around sive, not knowing what turmoil they might scars fresh, the wounds still open, the dark three centimetres per year. find. soil still spilling from beneath the Earth’s skin. It tends to be less of a slow creep, more a They flew down the coast and over to the series of sudden leaps—periodic, violent epicentre, the multiple rake-lines of ruptured releases of pressure in the form of faults immediately obvious—and unexpected. TEN DAYS AFTER the earthquake, Russ Van earthquakes. “It broke so many faults over a very large area. Dissen introduces me to the Kekerengu Fault. At two minutes past midnight on We knew about most of them, we just didn’t A metre-high clay-coloured cliff sticks straight November 14, part of the ‘Humps’ fault zone know that so many could rupture together,” up out of a paddock, crowned with a mohawk ruptured 15 kilometres below Culverden. Over Litchfield says. “If you’d asked me two weeks of grass. This part of the fault has been lifted the following hundred seconds, the earth ago if an earthquake down near Culverden both up and along: “We’re seeing this face as unzipped. could trigger the Needles Fault off Cape it gets on a conveyor belt and goes that way— The quake ruptured the Conway and Campbell, I’d have said, no way. it’s gone nine metres sideways.” Leader faults, jumped to the Hundalee fault, “That’s what we’re now trying to figure The cicatrices run across the paddock in flew along the Uwerau and Fidget faults, up out—how the earthquake moved from fault jagged ribbons until they’re drowned by a the Jordan Thrust and down the Papatea Fault, to fault.” newly formed lake. They cross the splintered set off the Kekerengu, and ran out to sea along road, tear through buckled railway lines and the Needles fault under the light of the full WITHIN DAYS, TEAMS dive into the ocean, where they join up with moon. New Zealand’s geography changed in OF SCIENTISTS FROM the Needles Fault and rupture the sea floor. a matter of minutes. UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH This earthquake was full of surprises, but Along a 120-kilometre stretch of the INSTITUTES AROUND NEW at least here in the northern part of the fault Kaikōura coast, 80 kilometres was lifted clear ZEALAND MOBILISED AND zone it’s unfolded pretty much as Van Dissen out of the water, permanently altering the FANNED OUT ACROSS THE imagined it might. shoreline and leaving sea creatures gasping “You’re never sure you’re going to be right, and exposed. Landslides dammed rivers and EARTHQUAKE ZONE— but in retrospect it was what I was envision- destroyed roads and railways. Kaikōura was LANDSLIDE EXPERTS, TSUNAMI ing. A large amount of slip, travelling along cut off, homes collapsed, and two people died. SPECIALISTS, COASTAL-UPLIFT the Kekerengu and onto the Needles Fault.” Many people didn’t sleep that night: quake- TEAMS, MARINE BIOLOGISTS. The Kekerengu Fault ripped the surface zone residents fled shaking houses and stum- LITCHFIELD CO-ORDINATED for 36 kilometres. In some places it caused bled up the nearest hill as tsunami warnings GNS’S LARGEST SQUAD—THE displacements of 12 metres, which by inter- were issued; civil defence and emergency ser- FAULT TEAM. national standards is a huge amount of slip vices readied the response; and scientists for a fault this size. stirred, electrified, wondering what would be Within days, teams of scientists from uni- Van Dissen has been probing and prodding revealed at first light. versities and research institutes around New this part of New Zealand for nearly 30 years, GNS geologist Nicola Litchfield woke as Zealand mobilised and fanned out across the since he arrived in Kaikōura in the late 80s as the quake rocked Wellington. “I didn’t actu- earthquake zone—landslide experts, tsunami a young American masters student on a ally get out of bed and drop-cover-hold or specialists, coastal-uplift teams, marine biolo- Fulbright Scholarship. anything, I just lay there thinking, ‘I wonder gists. Litchfield co-ordinated GNS’s largest He had a 1961 geology map with the what fault that was?’” squad—the fault team. Kekerengu Fault marked on it, strung high When the shaking stopped, she checked They needed to get there fast, before engi- along the Seaward Kaikōuras. He set off to the GeoNet website and confirmed it was a neers straightened roads and farmers mended try to find it before the snows came, tramp- big one. Tsunami concerns had closed the warped fences, before rainstorms blurred the ing up a different streambed each day, and road around the harbour for a few hours, but detail of slips, before the high-tide bull kelp each day finding evidence of a big thrust fault at 4.30AM she made it to the GNS office in rotted away on rocks raised from the sea. low down in the range, far below where he’d expected the Kekerengu to be. “I was frus- trated for a while until I realised I’d actually Russ Van Dissen from GNS investigates a chasm opened by the rupture on the Kekerengu Fault. Above discovered a new fault.” him, PhD student Alex Hatem from the University of Southern California locates the site using a super- accurate GPS reading. She’s part of an international team that arrived days after the quake to help out. He named it the Jordan Thrust—it links Though she studies the , she never expected to see it in action—“I blew a gasket the Hope to the Kekerengu faults and is when I found out!” she says. responsible for the uplift of the Seaward

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TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION

AS PEOPLE LIVING in central New Zealand are all Blenheim Wellington too aware, what happened in the early hours of Seddon November 14 wasn’t just one event, but the Nelson dramatic opening gambit in a sequence of Picton damaging shakes. It began with the Ward magnitude-7.8 shock that rattled up the faultlines from Culverden to Cook Strait—the epicentre marked here with the largest red Needles Fault circle—but has been followed by multiple smaller aftershocks scattered throughout the earthquake zone and across the lower North Island. As we went to press, there had been more than 8000 of them—53 of magnitude 5 or Kekerengu Fault larger—shown here as coloured dots representing size and location. Known active faults are marked in black, while those (so far) H found to have ruptured to the ground surface are Jordan Thrust G grey. The earthquakes also set off massive U underwater landslides which set sediment O roaring through sea canyons and into the R Hikurangi Trough—though further research is T Papatea Fault required to pinpoint where exactly they I happened. G N DATA: GNS, NIWA, UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY, VICTORIA UNIVERSITY A R U I K Hundalee Fault Kaikōura H K A The Humps Fault Zone I K Ō U R A C A N Y O N

KEY Known fault

Ruptured fault Culverden > M7 earthquake

M6–7 earthquake

M5–6 earthquake

M4–5 earthquake

M3–4 earthquake First earthquake event Magnitude 7.8

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Kaikōuras—and the study of the area’s tec- here, and that has forced the rupture over a Canterbury are working on the faults closest tonic movements became his life’s work. (That much wider area—rather than one sharp line, to the epicentre. There, in the Humps fault year, he also met his future wife, and decided an area hundreds of metres across has cracked, zone near Waiau, the ground hasn’t always to stay in New Zealand—“it’s been a rather crevassed and slipped. A farm track is dra- ripped open in a clean line—instead, the break- significant year in my life!”) matically displaced, the two halves no longer age is distributed across an area several kilo- Now, Van Dissen has returned to the touching, each now leading to a vertical cliff. metres wide. That’s unexpected, says Andy Kekerengu with a team of GNS geologists, two Manousakis uses a tablet to control the Nicol from the University of Canterbury—and drone pilots and several international experts drone and its attached camera. With a locust- it also makes the faults harder to trace and from a group called GEER (Geotechnical swarm buzz the machine’s four rotors whirr measure. Extreme Events Reconnaissance)—“they’re into life and it levitates into the grey sky. At “You end up crawling around through the kind of like Thunderbirds”, says Van Dissen. 50 metres up, it begins to trace a pre-pro- paddocks trying to find the cracks as they They mobilise in the wake of large earthquakes grammed grid pattern, taking photos that can weave their way across the countryside. and bring manpower and technology to help be combined with GPS measurements to There’s a bush telegraph out there, though, so with the scientific response, while learning create an accurate 3D model of the whole area. as soon as you meet one farmer, they tell you lessons they can apply at home. “The technology is really changing things,” where the next lot of ruptures are.” The team is trying to record as much infor- says Van Dissen. “Now we can start asking So far, they’ve turned up four faults in the mation as possible about the pattern of fault- questions about how the topography inter- southern zone that definitely ruptured to the ing in the landscape. Brand-new drone and acted with the fault rupture, and also monitor 3D mapping technology is enabling them to how the landscape heals after an event like capture much more detail than would have this. It’s a lot more descriptive than just having Russ Van Dissen clambers up a mangled section of been possible even five years ago. a flat map.” State Highway 1 at Waipapa Bay, the fault forcing Damp fog has obscured the mountains all one part of the road nearly four metres up. Around morning, and Greek drone technician John the headland, landslides block the road entirely, Manousakis has to pick his moment for A HUNDRED KILOMETRES of scarred land away preventing locals reaching schools and jobs in Kaikōura. Repairing road and rail links damaged in sending his contraption up over the rugged, to the south, other teams of geologists from the earthquake is likely to take months, even years, torn terrain. The fault has turned a corner GNS and the universities of Otago and and cost billions of dollars. WAS IT ‘THE BIG ONE’?

WEIGHING IN AT magnitude 7.8, the been 510 years, and the shortest be even larger, says Nicola meaning energy is building up that Kaikōura earthquake was the 140 years, it wouldn’t be all that Litchfield from GNS. will eventually be released in a equal second-largest in New surprising if it happened tomorrow. “It could be a magnitude 8, catastrophic earthquake. Zealand’s recorded history—only “The bottom line is—if not in our potentially a 9 if it ruptured along At the same time, the northern the 8.2 Wairarapa shake in 1855 lifetimes then it is increasingly the whole length of the subduction part of the subduction zone is surpassed it. likely in our children’s or zone—so that’s a pretty big hazard ‘creeping’ steadily—while in But it wasn’t ‘The Big One’ grandchildren’s,” says Berryman. for Wellington.” between the stuck and creeping scientists have been warning about. He says it’s unlikely the Such ‘megathrust’ subduction areas, ‘silent’ or ‘slow slip’ That’s still ahead of us, and in fact Kaikōura shake has brought that zone earthquakes occur along the earthquakes relieve some of the it’s more like the big two—the Alpine day forward—the energy travelled interface between two plates, tectonic stress. Seismic energy Fault and the Hikurangi subduction in the opposite direction—but rather than along faults in the from the Kaikōura quake has found zone could both bring about a there’s still a 30 per cent chance upper crust, and they’re its way into the subduction destructive earthquake of the Alpine Fault will rupture in the responsible for the largest zone—it seems it triggered several magnitude 8 or above. next 50 years. earthquakes and tsunamis in the new slow slip events off Gisborne- In 2012, on a river terrace deep The southern part of the fault is world—such as the M9 in Japan in Hawke’s Bay and Kapiti-Manuwatū. in the Fiordland bush, GNS where scientists think the rupture 2011, and the M9.3 in the Indian But while we definitely should Science’s Kelvin Berryman and is most likely to happen. Though Ocean in 2004. be taking precautions, says Ursula Cochran found evidence of the damage would be massive, Last year, a GNS team found Berryman, that doesn’t mean it 24 big ruptures of the Alpine Fault fortunately, like Kaikōura, that’s a the first geological evidence that will necessarily set off a Big One going back to 6000 BC. relatively unpopulated area. The subduction zone quakes have just yet. “We’re seeing these slow On average, those large M8 same can’t be said for the other happened near Cook Strait—twice slip events occur somewhere earthquakes happen every 330 big earthquake hazard. in the past 1000 years, the last along the margin every few years—and it’s been 299 years And a rupture of the Hikurangi one around 500 years ago. years—it’s happened hundreds of since the last one. While it’s not subduction zone—where the Other studies using GPS have times without leading to a large exactly overdue, given that the Pacific Plate dives beneath the shown the southern part of the earthquake so there’s no reason to longest time between quakes has eastern North Island—would likely is ‘stuck’, think that this time it will.”

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Railway signal lights still blaze in the darkness, though there’s no one to heed their warning—there will not be any trains along this line for at least a year. Before the Papatea Fault had its way with them, these tracks were once flat and parallel—and the pine trees stretched straight to the stars.

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Amongst the devastation, some positives: kayakers and rafters are excited about this brand-new Class V rapid rumbling in the once lazy, braided Clarence River, after the Papatea Fault ripped through the middle of it and altered the gradient. X marks the spot where a GNS team has taken a precise GPS measurement—the bright spraypaint is easy to make out in aerial drone photographs and can be incorporated into high-resolution 3D maps of the site.

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surface, though Nicol thinks they could find up to four more. And they’re looking closely at how each joins up with the next. “This earthquake is going to give us a lot of information about how, why and where faults interact with each other—we haven’t got to the bottom of that yet. That will help us with forecasting, to understand what situa- tions we might expect to trigger events like this, so we can produce better hazard models.” Because that is the ultimate aim of much of this research—to understand how and where this complex network of faults may cause prob- lems in the future. As new information about a fault’s history is discovered, geologists feed that into New Zealand’s National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM). It allows for a generalised level of background seismicity, and incorporates pal- aeo-seismic data (of the kind Van Dissen and Little have collected) about the slip rates and estimated recurrence of 530 active faults. The New technology is making this New Zealand’s most scrutinised earthquake. Greek technician John model is then used to develop building codes Manousakis pilots a drone over the Kekerengu Fault as it zig-zags towards the coast (left) while GNS and disaster response plans, and functions as geological surveyor Garth Archibald (right) uses LIDAR—a laser scanning technique—to measure a our best estimate of earthquake risk in each landslide dam caused by the quake, so that scientists can model the potential risk to Goose Bay residents downstream. area of the country. “I do believe we’re doing New Zealand a good service by studying these fault lines, Papatea and Leader faults that broke the historical data for—Napier, Edgecumbe, getting them into the building code, develop- surface on November 14 were both thought to Darfield—all of those ruptured multiple faults. ing guidelines for land use planners and engi- be inactive because there was no record in the And this earthquake has really brought that neers,” Van Dissen says. rocks of recent ruptures—that is, in the past home.” He tells a story about the Trans-Alaska 125,000 years. This is an area of contention among scien- Pipeline, which was built in the 1970s to trans- In addition, those widely distributed fault tists—and there is still so much that is port oil across North America and had to cross traces near the epicentre demonstrate just how unknown—but all agree that the 2016 Kaikōura right over the Denali Fault. Geologists and hard it is to accurately capture the whole event will contribute hugely to increasing our seismologists worked with engineers to analyse picture of an earthquake that occurred hun- understanding. the risk and design giant sliders for the pipe- dreds of years ago: the chances of finding and “Earthquakes like this are a terrible tragedy line to sit on in case of ground shaking. In 2002, measuring all of the displacement that occurred for a lot of people, but for science they’re a real the Denali Fault did rupture in a massive mag- are very slim. bonanza,” Nicol says. “We learned a lot from nitude-7.9 earthquake. “We’re underestimating the number of the Darfield quakes, but I expect this one will “The pipeline slid the way it was supposed faults, and the amount of displacement,” says be an order of magnitude better in terms of to, and not a drop of oil was spilt. There was Nicol. “So both of those mean we’re likely to what we can learn from it and how it helps us no ecological disaster,” Van Dissen said. “By have more earthquakes with bigger magni- improve our understanding of how the plate understanding displacement, we can help engi- tudes than we’ve allowed for.” boundaries work.” neers design infrastructure for when they have However, there’s a competing suggestion to cross faultlines, because that’s inevitable that might mean the model is over-estimating here in New Zealand.” the hazard. In general, the model has a ‘one EARTHQUAKES ARE TRAGIC. The scientists But Andy Nicol says the Kaikōura fault = one earthquake’ policy—but Nicol says are acutely aware of the tension between their Earthquake has thrown into relief ways in recent research has shown multiple fault rup- professional excitement and residents’ distress which the model needs to be improved. tures are actually the norm for big earthquakes and displacement. Often they’re the first out- “We’ve known for a while that we’re not in New Zealand. That means the model could siders on the scene, and, though they’re not seeing in the geological record all the faults be allowing for five earthquakes when there trained counsellors, end up doing a lot of that could be active,” he says, and that means was only one. listening. they’re not making it into the model. The “The big earthquakes that we’ve got good Heading south along the battered highway,

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The earthquake collapsed an entire hillside onto Derrick and Jane Millton’s property on the south bank of the Clarence River—once-productive paddocks now covered in a landslide 300 metres high and 1.5 kilometres across. “It’s like a névé field of crevasses—you wouldn’t ride a horse across it,” Derrick says. An aerial photo of three of their cows marooned in the morass went viral, and though the world rejoiced when they were saved, some of the Milltons’ other stock didn’t make it. “We didn’t tell CNN that, though. No point being dramatic.”

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The earthquake and subsequent aftershocks sent 80–100,000 landslides tumbling down mountainsides in Marlborough and Canterbury— presenting an ongoing danger for those downstream. This one blocked the Hapuku River, creating a dam 150 metres high and completely burying Barratt’s bivvy, a tiny DOC hut beloved by climbers. Landslide experts are monitoring this and other dams, using computer modelling to anticipate the risks if and when they break.

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east coast of the lower North Island. Fault forging offshore virtually into the comprehensively buried in a series of huge He was leading a team of 14 people study- canyon. That might suggest the risk isn’t as slips. It’s also the site of the most striking ing the impacts of past earthquakes on the great as was once thought, Mountjoy says, but coastal uplift. In most places, the seabed was floor of the Hikurangi Trough, the vast deep he hopes to take one of NIWA’s smaller vessels elevated two to three metres. Here, where basin that follows the plate boundary north out this summer to find out just what has hap- twin traces of the Papatea Fault split to the from Kaikōura. They were taking cores of pened down there. shore, they forced a 700-metre stretch of what are called ‘turbidites’: layers of debris “This is probably the most dynamic canyon coastline five and a half metres out of the sea. from underwater landslides—‘turbidity cur- in New Zealand and the opportunity to see That sudden thrusting extrusion is hard rents’—that roar along the seabed after large how it responds to an event like this is unprec- to imagine—what must it have looked like in earthquakes. edented in our lifetime,” he says. “There has the moonlight, as tonnes of solid rock leapt Because the heavier particles fall out first been a lot of speculation about the influence from the seabed, sloughing off the ocean? Ten and the lighter ones settle over days and weeks, of earthquakes and tectonics on submarine days on, limp tresses of dying kelp lie stinking the cores look stripy, so it’s easy to see where canyon development, but here’s an example on the rocks, and seabirds fight over the one turbidite ends and another begins. They where it’s just happened, and we can see what banquet raised up for them. There is still a can also be dated. “We can build up high-res- it does.” sense something dramatic happened here, but olution chronologies of when particular earth- Mountjoy’s team will also try to resolve it’s fading. Soon, it will seem that it has always quakes affected that part of the sea the last puzzle pieces of this earthquake’s been this way. This is the great illusion of our floor—where, how big, what’s the recurrence complex fault story. What happened when the landscape—it feels so solid, so permanent, between events, and, with a bit of luck, how Hundalee Fault ran offshore, what undersea but it is made in violence and constant change. much time since the last one,” says Barnes. fault was triggered? And what lifted the At the beach we find Jane and Derrick Now they had a chance to measure the Kaikōura Peninsula? Millton, the Clarence valley effects of a large earthquake on the undersea These are the detailed farmers whose landslide- environment, just days after the event. questions that underlie the THIS IS THE GREAT stranded cows made interna- Conveniently, they had all the gear and exper- big puzzles of geology—and ILLUSION OF OUR tional news. An entire hillside tise on board already, so they diverted the plenty of those, too, remain LANDSCAPE—IT has collapsed onto their prop- vessel to the Kaikōura coast. unanswered. How do earth- FEELS SO SOLID, erty, a slip 300 metres high In 2015, Barnes and colleagues had mapped quakes leap from one fault SO PERMANENT, and a kilometre across, parts of the underwater Needles Fault in detail, to another? How exactly did BUT IT IS MADE Derrick says. They’ve come and they wanted to see if anything had the Kaikōura Earthquake IN VIOLENCE AND down to show a friend what’s changed. It had. The fault had slipped verti- influence other seismic CONSTANT CHANGE. happened to their local bay. cally by 1.4 metres and broken along 34 kilo- activity, like Rotorua’s Jane Millton was born Van Dissen, photographer Rob Suisted and I metres of seabed. reawakened geyser and the here, spent most of her life On November 14, life changed overnight for Clarence River farmers Rick and Julia King. Their house has stumble across a gathering at the Kekerengu been given a yellow sticker, meaning they’re not allowed to sleep in it at night, and it’s been shunted The Tangaroa team also drew up sediment Hawke’s Bay slow-slip earthquake? And is ‘The here. “The second day after the earthquake I Store. A hulking black helicopter roars on the several metres higher—so even their view is different. But community spirit is strong—a team of cores, and soon found evidence that a brand- Big One’—the anticipated magnitude-8 was so sad… But then I had this funny feeling beach, and Prime Minister John Key is posing volunteers arrived shortly after the quake, offering to fix fences and roads and rebuild their dairy yards. new turbidite had formed over a wide area of rupture on the Alpine Fault—more or less that it’s quite exciting—what a privilege in my for photos with the locals. the Hikurangi Trough, 100–200 millimetres likely now? Did it ease stresses on the fault, or lifetime to see something I know so well, now Van Dissen knows a lot of people, includ- Over by the tea table we meet John Murray. is Christmas for me, this is what we train for.’” thick and extending 300 kilometres from make them worse? (See sidebar.) so different.” But the novelty is wearing off. ing Bridget Jessep, who runs Clarence River His family has lived in the Clarence River He didn’t mind, though. “It pisses me off that Kaikōura. That means the earthquake must If anything, the mysteries of the Kaikōura “The first few days, you’re buzzing on adrena- Rafting. She’s here partly to catch up with valley for three generations. The morning I’ve lost some land, but you’ve got to look at have caused massive submarine landslides, Earthquake have underscored just how lin, and then it hits you—the emotion and the neighbours—and with her GP, so she can get after the quake, “one of the local rafters came the big picture. We’ve seen something phe- says Barnes—but until the offshore area is complex the Earth’s processes are. The detail tiredness and the reality of the massive job a prescription renewed—but the PM’s visit is back and said, ‘Something’s happened to your nomenal, that my father never saw, that my comprehensively surveyed, we won’t know gathered by the marine, uplift, fault, seismol- ahead of you to tidy it all up.” meaningful, too. She and her neighbours have river flat down there,’” he says. “Something’s grandfather never saw.” where they occurred. ogy and other science teams over the coming She looks out at the unfamiliar beach. “It’s felt abandoned since the quake. happened, all right.” Joshu Mountjoy, also from NIWA, has weeks and months, each a tiny fragment of a a pretty special place. It will be again. It’s just “We’ve seen more of GNS than the emer- Murray farms a 70-hectare stretch along spent years trying to understand the behav- million-piece puzzle, will add incrementally a bit broken.” gency services. It’s just interesting being on the northern bank of the Clarence, a flat area AS THE SUN rose on November 14, the earth- iour of these kinds of landslides—in particu- to our understanding of how this plate bound- the sharp end of the stick in an event like this,” at the foot of the hills running towards the quake’s dramatic effects on the landscape lar, to establish the risk of one occurring at ary works. Kate Evans is a television producer and regular she says. river. Overnight, the unspooling Papatea Fault were clear—the fault traces, the uplift, some the head of the Kaikōura Canyon. Scoured Predicting with confidence where and contributor to New Zealand Geographic, largely Like most others, Jessep is preparing for a had jacked up the far side by eight to 10 metres, 100,000 landslides. For scientists who focus out by sediment from Canterbury’s rivers, the when an earthquake will happen is the holy focused on science. difficult summer, but hardship doesn’t mean leaving a vertical cliff in the middle of his for- on the marine environment, finding out what canyon starts very close to shore in shallow grail of this field of geology, and it’s still a long people aren’t fascinated by the transforma- merly flat field and diverting the river in front had happened to the ocean floor was a lot water, quickly diving to 1200 metres deep: a way off. tions around them—and hungry for more of it. “I was absolutely gobsmacked,” says more complex, though luck was on their side. big landslide here would cause a devastating information. Van Dissen produces a map and Murray. Marine geologist Philip Barnes from NIWA tsunami. SPECIAL FOCUS geology pamphlet from his pocket, underlines A GNS team has already been down to was at sea when the earthquake struck, on That didn’t happen on November 14, IN THE LATE afternoon we reach Waipapa Bay. Everything we know about earthquakes: faults and answers questions. check it out. “The woman in charge said, ‘This board the research vessel Tangaroa off the despite the intense shaking and the Hundalee It’s the end of the road, the highway www.nzgeo.com/earthquake

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