Wave warnings go unheeded
Canterbury whitebaiters and surfers have ignored Civil Defence warnings to stay away from beaches as small waves from the massive Chile earthquake reach New Zealand.
Christchurch Civil Defence and Emergency Management (CDEM) manager Murray Sinclair said 30 centimetre wave surges hit Lyttelton Harbour and Sumner at 2.30am and 5am. Civil Defence has warned people to keep away from Canterbury beaches and river mouths until early Saturday morning following the deadly 8.3 magnitude earthquake with more tidal activity expected.
There have been reports of whitebaiters in the water near the Waimakariri rivermouth and surfers at New Brighton.
Sinclair said said it was disappointing some people chose to ignore wellpublicised warnings.
‘‘For the whitebaiters they are waistdeep in the water with their waders on. If they are washed off their feet that’s not a good situation.
‘‘We will be getting one of the rangers to go up the Waimak river and talk to the whitebaiters and go along the beach to talk to the surfers, but it just goes to show people aren’t heeding the message to stay on out of the water,’’ Sinclair said.
He said rangers had warned whitebaiters of the risk on Thursday, and locked a gate near the rivermouth as a precaution.
University of Canterbury student Blake Williams, who surfed at New Brighton beach on Friday morning, said if there was a major risk he would expect authorities to warn people off at the beach.
‘‘We’ve had them before at [ Mt Maunganui] and it’s never come to anything . . . obviously there’s a threat, but we weren’t so worried about it because it would only be a metre and we could sort ourselves if something happened.’’
The first waves reached the Chatham Islands at 11.50pm on Thursday. Civil Defence said the highest recorded there was about half a metre above normal sea level.
From North Cape to Christchurch, including Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier, Wellington and Kaikoura, tsunami gauges recorded waves of up to 30cm above normal.
Sinclair woke several times during the night to check activity.
He said the wave surges that hit Lyttelton Harbour and Sumner measured around 30cm above the normal sea level.
‘‘Which is what you could expect, there could be three, four, five surges which will peter out during the day.
‘‘The advice coming out is to stay off the beaches, our concern is particularly for whitebaiters around river mouths like the Waimakariri, if there is a stronger tidal current we don’t want anyone sitting in the surf and swept off their feet.’’
Sinclair said there had been no reports of damage in Canterbury. He did not expect the waves to ‘‘inundate’’ coastal settlements. There had been no reports of tsunami watchers, although that could change.
High tide was due in Lyttelton at 7.52am.
The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management earlier warned people to keep away from all Canterbury beaches and river mouths until early Saturday morning.
People in affected areas should stay out of the water, off beaches and shore areas, and not go sightseeing.
The quake, which lasted for three minutes, caused a series of tsunami surges – some as high as 4.5 metres – to swamp towns along Chile’s coast. It killed 10 people and forced about 1 million people to evacuate their homes.
Tsunami warnings were issued for Japan, Russia, California and Hawaii.