The 2014 Eketahuna earthquake struck at 3:52 pm on 20 January, centred 15 km east of Eketahuna on the south-east of

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-larges ...

. It had a maximum perceived intensity of VII (''Very strong'') on the Mercalli intensity scale. Originally reported as magnitude 6.6 on the

Richter Scale The Richter scale —also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale—is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and presented in his landmark 1935 p ...

, the earthquake was later downgraded to a magnitude of 6.2. A total of 1112 aftershocks were recorded, ranging between magnitudes 2.0 and 4.9 on the Richter Scale.

Tectonic setting

New Zealand lies along the boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and I ...

s. In the

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasma ...

most of the relative displacement between these plates is taken up along a single dextral (right lateral)

strike-slip fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tecton ...

with a major reverse component, the Alpine Fault. In the

the displacement is mainly taken up along the Hikurangi Subduction Zone, although the remaining dextral strike-slip component of the relative plate motion is accommodated by the

North Island Fault System The North Island Fault System (also known as North Island Dextral Fault Belt or NIFS) is a set of southwest–northeast trending seismically-active faults in the North Island of New Zealand that carry most of the dextral (right lateral) strike-s ...

(NIFS). The

focal mechanism The focal mechanism of an earthquake describes the deformation in the source region that generates the seismic waves. In the case of a fault-related event it refers to the orientation of the fault plane that slipped and the slip vector and ...

of the earthquake, its depth and the distribution of aftershocks show that it was a result of oblique normal faulting within the upper part of the subducting Pacific Plate, with the rupture terminating upwards at the plate interface.

Damage

It was felt strongly down the country, from

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about I ...

in the north to

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

in the south, and more than 9,000 reports were submitted by the public to GeoNet, the geological hazards monitoring network. ''

The New Zealand Herald ''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation of all newspaper ...

'' newspaper reported damage to walls and chimneys and road closures in the lower North Island. The Earthquake Commission, (

EQC The Earthquake Commission, ( mi, Kōmihana Rūwhenua), is a New Zealand Crown entity that invests in natural disaster research and education as well as providing natural disaster insurance to residential property owners. In March 2022, a bill ...

) received 5,013 claims, 1,514 of them from

Palmerston North Palmerston North (; mi, Te Papa-i-Oea, known colloquially as Palmy) is a city in the North Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Manawatū-Whanganui region. Located in the eastern Manawatu Plains, the city is near the north bank of the ...

. Minor to moderate damage was also reported in Eketahuna,

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by m ...

Masterton Masterton ( mi, Whakaoriori), a large town in the Greater Wellington Region of New Zealand, operates as the seat of the Masterton District (a territorial authority or local-government district). It is the largest town in the Wairarapa, a r ...

, Carterton, Kapiti Coast,

Pahiatua , image_skyline = Market day pahiatua 1st dec 2007 1.JPG , imagesize = , image_caption = , image_flag = , flag_size = , image_seal = , seal_size = , image_shi ...

, Levin and Otaki. Three 1920s-style buildings in Masterton were evacuated after cracks appeared. One building needed to be demolished. According to ''The New Zealand Herald'', two people were injured as a result of falls. Hokowhitu Lagoon in

is thought to have suffered water-bed damage leading to water leaking. Currently no fix is in place to solve this.

References

External links

Computer Simulations of Earthquake Waves
– GNS Science * {{Earthquakes in New Zealand Eketahuna earthquake 2014 earthquakes Earthquakes in New Zealand Tararua District Eketāhuna 2014 disasters in New Zealand

Tectonic setting

Damage

See also

References

External links