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Jun 4, 2017 · Earthquakes in Wellington. In 1855, an earthquake struck the Wellington Region, permanently altering its landscape. Measuring 8.2, it was New Zealand's most powerful earthquake and was caused by movement on the Wairarapa Fault:
- Intensity of The Earthquake
- Rebuilding
- Fatalities
- Effects on Land and Sea
- The Cause
- Changes to The Landscape
- Aftermath
The evening of 23 January 1855 was the end of a two-day holiday, the 15th anniversary of Wellington’s founding. Shortly after 9 p.m. a violent earthquake began; in Wellington the main shock lasted for at least 50 seconds. People fled outdoors, where they remained for the night in tents and makeshift beds, as incessant aftershocks rocked the area – ...
After the 1848 Marlborough earthquake, many Wellington buildings had been rebuilt in wood. Some new commercial premises, however, were constructed of brick because of fire risk. The 1855 earthquake damaged many of these, including the jail and the bank. The local council chambers and adjoining government offices, both two-storey wooden buildings, c...
The number of fatalities caused by the earthquake is estimated at between five and nine. The sole casualty in Wellington was Baron von Alzdorf, who died when a brick chimney in his hotel collapsed. Two people died in a fissure in Manawatū. In Wairarapa, several Māori (the reported number varies from two to six) were killed when a wharecollapsed. Su...
In Hutt Valley, slips blocked roads and large fissures opened up in the ground. Numerous landslides scarred the slopes of the Remutaka Range. The earthquake caused a tsunami in Cook Strait and Wellington Harbour; some buildings on Lambton Quay near the shoreline were flooded by tsunami waves.
The earthquake was caused by movement along at least 140 kilometres of the Wairarapa Fault, along the eastern edge of the Remutaka Range. About 5,000 square kilometres of land west of the fault was lifted up and tilted. The southern end of the Remutaka Range rose by over 6 metres, but the uplift decreased westward to near zero along the west coast ...
The uplift created a new fringe of beach and rock platforms along the Wellington coast. Many jetties in Wellington Harbour became unusable, but there were also beneficial effects. Blocks of the city’s central business district now occupy land that was below sea level before 1855. The newly exposed strip of shoreline between Wellington and Hutt Vall...
While memories of the 1848 and 1855 earthquakes were fresh, most of the new buildings in Wellington were constructed of wood. The old Government Buildings, opened in 1876, is one of the most impressive wooden structures of this period, with a facade imitating a classical European stone building. However, it took only 25–30 years for awareness of bu...
May 11, 2004 · Benioff-Wadati zone earthquakes associated with plate convergence can be traced dipping gently from southeast of the North Island to ∼25 km depth beneath Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand [ Robinson, 1986; Robinson and Benites, 1996 ].
- Ralf Gross, Alan G. Green, Heinrich Horstmeyer, John H. Begg
- 53
- 2004
- 11 May 2004
Nov 30, 2021 · With a vertical basement offset of up to 130 m, the Aotea Fault along with the Wellington Fault gives the Wellington Basin two sharp, near vertical and parallel margins, which would be likely to reflect seismic energy between them and cause reverberation and resonance effects during an earthquake.
- Alistair Stronach, Tim Stern
- 2021
New evidence from offset landscape features and studies of trenches dug across the region’s fault lines suggests that intervals between large earthquakes on the Wellington-Hutt Valley segment of the Wellington Fault (Figure 1) are longer than previously estimated.
May 28, 2021 · The answer is the Hikurangi subduction zone, New Zealand’s largest earthquake fault and a hazard that communities are learning about through East Coast LAB’s Life at the Boundary Roadshow, which comes to several locations across the Wellington region next week.
People also ask
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Did the 1855 earthquake reduce stress on the Wellington Fault?
Is the Wellington Fault a seismic hazard?
A horizontal displacement of up to 18 metres (59 ft) was accompanied by uplift and tilting of the Rimutaka Range on the northwestern side of the fault with vertical offsets of about 6 metres near the fault reducing to almost nothing on the western coast of the Wellington Peninsula.
