7.1 Earthquake Hits New Zealand

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11183685

An earthquake struck near Christchurch at 4:35am this morning (5:35pm GMT). Apparently there was no mention of it on the 10pm news in the UK. They've cancelled all programming on channel One here and replaced it with reports on the earthquake.

I think the initial quake was a 7.4 and one of the many aftershakes was 7.1. No fatalities, a couple of serious injuries, lots of minor injuries, and a lot of badly damaged buildings. The pictures they're showing on TV are interesting. There are huge cracks in the ground and it seems like most buildings have at least got some cracks in them, if not walls missing.

I was just there on Monday looking at businesses for sale with dad. I wonder how they're doing. I called a friend in Dunedin who said she slept through it but it woke up some of her friends who thought it was bad enough that they had to stand under the doorways.

my friend goes there in 2 weeks and is now in a state of panic

Im here at the minute and was in Christchruch when it happened. It may be a tad bad to say it but the feeling of being in one is amazing! Its great that no one was hurt but the bar we were in till 3am was completely crashed so we were very lucky!

Also yesterday a sky diving companys plane went out and blew up killing 9 people including most of the company who were good friends to my tour guide. We were due to fly with them next week at Fox glacier. Really sad to hear tbh