The Port Hills Fault is an inferred active seismic fault believed to be located beneath the

Port Hills The Port Hills are a range of hills in Canterbury Region, so named because they lie between the city of Christchurch and its port at Lyttelton. They are an eroded remnant of the Lyttelton volcano, which erupted millions of years ago. The hi ...

near

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...

, on the east coast of New Zealand's

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 ...

Christchurch earthquake

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

6.3 earthquake occurred on the Port Hills Fault at on

local time Local time is the time observed in a specific locality. There is no canonical definition. Originally it was mean solar time, but since the introduction of time zones it is generally the time as determined by the time zone in effect, with daylight s ...

(23:51 UTC),M6.3 – South Island of New Zealand
, USGS causing widespread damage and fatalities. The earthquake was centred west of the town of Lyttelton, and south-east of the centre of

, New Zealand's second-most populous city. It followed nearly six months after the 7.1 magnitude

2010 Canterbury earthquake The 2010 Canterbury earthquake (also known as the Darfield earthquake) struck the South Island of New Zealand with a moment magnitude of 7.1 at on , and had a maximum perceived intensity of X (''Extreme'') on the Mercalli intensity scale. Som ...

that caused significant damage to the region but no direct fatalities.

References

{{Seismic faults of New Zealand Seismic faults of New Zealand 2011 Christchurch earthquake Buried rupture earthquakes