June 14th, 2009
Why do we Civil Defence folks always go on about storing water? Well, to answer that question it might help to have the background: The water that comes out of our taps comes from big water tanks up on the tops of our hills. The water that fills up these reservoirs mostly comes from Te Marua (Upper Hutt), Wainuiomata and Petone.
Since our main water supply pipes coming out from the Hutt cross the Wellington fault, they will probably break in a large earthquake, which will take a while to fix. As well as this, some of the pipes from the local reservoir to your house might break due to slips etc. Most of the reservoirs are fitted with valves that turn off the water if there is a big earthquake, to stop leaks draining all the water.
So, all things considered it could easily be several weeks after an earthquake before you start seeing water coming out of your taps again.
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Tags: Be Prepared, water
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May 13th, 2009
The NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering sent a group to China to study the effects of the Sichuan earthquake that happened on 12 May 2008. I went to their Wellington reporting-back lecture held on 12 May 2009 - the first anniversary of the earthquake.
It was really interesting so I have written up my notes and here they are.
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Tags: earthquake
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April 24th, 2009
Every month the Ministry of Civil Defence publishes a newsletter called the E-Bulletin. It is aimed at the Civil Defence community rather than the general public but it has some interesting articles.
This month it mentions a series of seminars put on by engineers who vistited the area devastated by the magnitude 8 earthquake in Sichuan, China, last year. The Wellington seminar is on 12 May - exactly 1 year since the earthquake.
More details can be found in the April E-Bulletin.
Gisborne Mayor, Meng Foon by collapsed apartments, Sichuan 2008
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April 18th, 2009
We are almost ready to install our first 2-way radio in a local school. The radio for Otari school is all ready to go and Tinakori Lions are ready to help us install it.
Tags: radio, school
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