Ready for the big quake
When the Alpine Fault ruptures, a small settlement near Queenstown will be ready, writes Jo McKenzie-McLean.
When the Alpine Fault ruptures a small settlement near Queenstown will be ready.
The team leading Project Alpine Fault Magnitude 8 (AF8) – a Civil Defence Emergency Management-led response planning initiative for a future Alpine Fault earthquake in the South Island – has singled out Camp Glenorchy as an example of what communities should be doing to prepare for the magnitude 8 earthquake predicted to occur within the next 50 years.
It is expected the large earthquake in the Southern Alps will lead to a ‘‘cascade’’ of hazards including aftershocks, landslides, rockfall tsunami, landslide dams, landslide dambreak outburst floods, debris flows, river aggradation, river avulsion and exacerbated river flooding, according to a Project AF8 report.
Dr Caroline Orchiston, the science lead for Project AF8, said the newly-built camping ground in Glenorchy, about 45 minutes from Queenstown, has put its hand up to act as a community welfare centre when the Alpine Fault earthquake hits.
‘‘They are basically selfsufficient so Glenorchy is in a really good position now having them in their community and willing to act as a welfare centre.’’
Camp Glenorchy project manager Steve Hewland features in one of four videos released by Project AF8 to show how communities and businesses can be more resilient to the impact of emergencies.
‘‘In the event of a big earthquake there is pretty much a 100 per cent chance the road will be closed. There are a lot of steep cliffs ...That will mean that if it happens at the peak of the summer time when all the hiking tracks have got a lot of people on them, there could be up to 800 to 1000 people more in the area that are going to need food and housing and Camp Glenorchy will play a part in that.’’
The camp had a 200kw solar farm that generated all its electricity, 30,000 litres of rainwater storage, composting toilets and a large building constructed to a higher level of earthquake resistance than typical, and would withstand a large earthquake, he said.
‘‘We hope it will be able to be used as a welfare centre for the community ... Having these resilient factors built into the development is going to help the community in the event of an earthquake.’’
Orchiston said she had been researching the Alpine Fault since 2005 and people had come a long way.
‘‘No one was talking about the Alpine Fault back then. It just wasn’t in the consciousness and I think since the Canterbury earthquakes, and especially since the Kaiko¯ura earthquakes, public awareness around these sorts of things is much higher and the effort to get our society more prepared is quickly advancing.’’
Despite advancements, there were still a lot of people who were not informed about the Alpine Fault, which was about 85km away from Queenstown and likely to rupture ‘‘in our lifetime’’, she said.
‘‘The very bottom of the Alpine Fault goes offshore at Milford Sound. Ground shaking is obviously your signal a big earthquake has happened, then of course there are a huge range of consequences of shaking like that – landslides, when you look at your road network you have some quite vulnerable sections of highway – the Devils Staircase, Crown Range, Nevis Bluff – where it isn’t going to take too much to disrupt those roads. If all three were to get affected you have obviously got an isolated population in Queenstown. That’s not beyond the realms of possibility.
‘‘It will be significant ... but there are lots of things we could be doing now to really make a difference.’’
Over the past 8000 years the Alpine Fault had generated 27 large earthquakes around a magnitude 8, she said.
‘‘We know that the events are happening very regularly through time and when you average it out they come around every 300 years or so and we know the last one was in 1717AD – 301 years ago. We are now entering a period of the next 50 years where there is a relatively high probability of another Alpine Fault event happening.’’
The effect on Queenstown Lakes from a magnitude 8 earthquake would be longlasting, particularly on its vulnerable tourism industry, she said. ‘‘Queenstown is a tourismreliant city and this is going to be an event that has a really prolonged effect on tourism flows to New Zealand and around New Zealand. People won’t be able to get around parts of the South Island by road. International visitors could well be put off coming to the South Island for a period of time ... What we found after the Canterbury earthquakes is tourism didn’t recover properly for five or six years after that event. I think there needs to be more awareness around the fact that tourism is a really vulnerable industry in this regard and it’s not going to be something you will get over in two to three months. It’s going to have a lasting effect.’’
Project AF8 project manager Jon Mitchell said the team had completed a framework for responding to an Alpine Fault earthquake that was ‘‘inclusive’’ and ‘‘mutually supporting’’ across the South Island.
‘‘It’s the first time something like this on this scale has been done, and it’s the first time the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management Resilience Fund has been used across jurisdictions to support groups working more collaboratively.’’
The Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management granted $490,000 to create the high-level response plan within two years, and research funding was also received from Resilience to Nature’s Challenges (National Science Challenge) and QuakeCoRE (The New Zealand Centre for Earthquake Resilience).