Christchurch, NZ

My comrade in words the Angry Exile brought this site to my attention which kind of tells a greater story about the Christchurch Earthquake than the one currently being covered in the mainstream.

Often when an Earthquake is reported, all you see are the headlines, like '200 people killed in quake horror' for example. When you read the associated articles, they skim over the surface, glossing over important details that might be actually useful, apart from generating mere sympathy for the victims. The really interesting thing about the Christchurch tremors is the concentration of seismic activity and where it is happening.

What really did the damage was not one big quake, like the 7.1 magnitude on the picture from 4th September 2010, but a series of rapid hammer blows of 3-4+ magnitude after the main shocks of 6.3 and 5.7, which occurred within twelve minutes of one another. They were followed by a 5.9 magnitude quake less than two hours later. If you run through the sequence of tremors, you can see that the vast majority of the recent shocks recorded are in what is known to be the northern caldera wall of an extinct volcano. Having run through the recent sequences, I'd hazard a guess that what is happening under the Southern edge of Christchurch is a widespread collapse of the old volcanic vent system and magma chambers in the 2-12km depth range. Perhaps even slippage in the faults within the caldera walls as they 'settle'. Not directly related to the nearby Greendale fault at all.

I'm only an amateur observer of such phenomena, but that's what it looks like to me. Go look for yourselves. Run the sequence of 22nd February and you'll see what I mean.