A powerful earthquake and hundreds of strong aftershocks rocked New Zealand in the early hours Sunday, November 13, killing at least two people and prompting a tsunami warning that sent thousands fleeing to higher grounds.
With communications cut off, emergency response teams were flying by helicopter to the region at the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude quake, some 91 km northeast of Christchurch in the South Island, amid reports of injuries and collapsed buildings.
Large cracks appeared in the road near the town of Culverden, about 100 kilometres north of Christchurch, with small landslides covering part of the highway.
The first tremor, just 23 km deep, struck the Pacific island nation just after midnight. New Zealand’s Geonet measured yesterday’s quake at magnitude 7.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.8.
New Zealand lies in the seismically active “Ring of Fire”, a 40,000 km acres of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Ocean. Around 90%t of the world’s earthquakes occur within this region.
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