ADVERTISEMENTCentral New Zealand, including the capital Wellington, was shaken by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake on Monday. There were no reports of injuries, and damage was mostly superficial.
The minute-long, rolling quake was centred in the mainly rural Wairarapa region about 120 kilometres north east of Wellington, at a depth of 50 kms, government seismologists at GNS Science said.
“There’s been damage to houses mainly in the (Wairarapa) area, and that includes chimneys down, windows broken,” a spokesman at Police National headquarters told Reuters. “We’ve had a lot of rock falls and slips on highways in the area, and the rest has been pretty minor.” The quake was felt from the middle of the North Island down through the upper parts of the South Island. More than a dozen aftershocks measuring up to 4.5 were recorded.
Two amateur videos uploaded on Youtube show effects of the tremors.
A dog racing meet at Manawatu was abandoned due to the earthquake. Watch the video below:
This CCTV footage shows a large model railway in Lower Hutt shake from three different angles:
(with Reuters)