The 2003 Fiordland earthquake struck the remote region of

Fiordland Fiordland is a geographical region of New Zealand in the south-western corner of the South Island, comprising the westernmost third of Southland. Most of Fiordland is dominated by the steep sides of the snow-capped Southern Alps, deep lakes, ...

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 Tasman ...

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 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

on 22 August 2003 at 12:12 am

NZST Time in New Zealand is divided by law into two standard time, standard time zones. The main islands use New Zealand Standard Time (NZST), 12 hours in advance of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) / List of military time zones, military M (Mike), ...

. The epicentre was 12 km deep, and was thought to be near

Secretary Island Secretary Island () is an island in southwestern New Zealand, lying entirely within Fiordland National Park. Roughly triangular in shape, it lies between Doubtful Sound / Patea in the south and Te Awa-o-Tū / Thompson Sound in the north, with i ...

at the entrance to

Doubtful Sound Doubtful Sound / Patea is a fiord in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound / Piopiotahi. It took second place after Milford Sound as New Zea ...

. At 7.2 magnitude, it was one of the largest quakes in the country for some time, and was the largest shallow quake since the

1968 Inangahua earthquake The 1968 Inangahua earthquake struck west of Murchison, New Zealand, near the small town of Inangahua Junction at 5:24 am NZDT on 24 May 1968. The earthquake had a moment magnitude of 7.1, a local magnitude of 6.7, a surface wave magnitu ...

. There was an aftershock two hours later at 2.12 am, followed over several days by frequent small tremors; by 21 September, there were 6,365 aftershocks. Fiordland is one of the seismically active parts of the country according to GNS seismologist Dr. Warwick Smith, as they are a relief mechanism for stresses as the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates are being forced together in the area, with the Pacific Plate subducting under the Australian Plate. In August 2004 there was another large earthquake of magnitude 7.1 in Fiordland. This was the same location as an earthquake of 6.7 magnitude on 10 August 1993.

Damage

Te Anau Te Anau is a town in the Southland region of the South Island of New Zealand. In Maori, Te-Anau means the Place of the Swirling Waters. It is on the eastern shore of Lake Te Anau in Fiordland. Te Anau is 155 kilometres north of Invercargill an ...

some 70 km to the south-east residents felt the quake strongly and items fell off shelves in shops and homes. Some of the pupils at Te Anau Primary School felt "weird" or "scared". A team of geologists led by Ian Turnbull went to investigate and reported "landsliding on a large scale". They recorded at least 200

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated grade (slope), slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of ...

s after overflying seventy percent of central and western Fiordland.

References

External links

* {{Earthquakes in New Zealand 2003 earthquakes Fiordland earthquake 2003 disasters in New Zealand July 2003 events in Oceania Earthquakes in New Zealand History of Southland, New Zealand

Damage

See also

References

Further reading

External links