Walker: The sand volcanoes are my favorite.

Is that what those are?

PacManDreaming: I came in here specifically to post something about that photo. All I know is, someone is gonna get a hell of a train ride.

Yeah, train service will be cancelled for a while :)

I am amazed there wasn't tons of death with this thing, considering all the collapsed stuff.

Three Crooked Squirrels: I'm having a hard time figuring out how this happened. Pretty wild.

Same thing as in some of the other pics. The tracks traverse over the where the land shifted. Given the land shifted slowly enough it made a nice curve in the tracks. The amazing thing is almost perfectly shifted the rail bed as well. As for train tracks bending like that, while short sections of track are fairly stiff, once you make a very long section of rail by welding together short sections, you end with something that is quite flexible.

jaylectricity: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! !

NOT THE WINE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

That's a truly dreadful picture, jaylectricity. One can only hope that the ones on the floor are Californian imports.

I never did hear, was anyone injured?

benlonghair: Walker: The sand volcanoes are my favorite.

Is that what those are?

Liquifaction creates some pretty interesting visuals. Somewhere there's a video of a building just sinking to a large sand boil.

If there's one thing this album shows it's that brick building are not your friend in an earthquake.

Di Atribe: I never did hear, was anyone injured?

Only Methodists, from looking at the pictures.

Walker: The sand volcanoes are my favorite.

We usually call those 'anthills' here in the US.

Place looks like a war-zone...

Well, the kinds of war-zones you see in movies, comics and video games where people indiscriminately blow the corners off buildings for no discernible reason, anyway... >_>

Alien Robot: Walker: The sand volcanoes are my favorite.

We usually call those 'anthills' here in the US.

....

Allrighty....who was showing too much cleavage???

Tillmaster: That's a truly dreadful picture, jaylectricity. One can only hope that the ones on the floor are Californian imports.

Hey, them's fighting words, dude. We may not make the best wines, but we do make a lot of good ones. ;)

And as a west-coast denizen, I am quite impressed by both the devastation and lack thereof in those pics. It could've been worse than it was, but I notice a lot of the damaged buildings are made of brick-and-mortar. Are those structures really old or something? I'd figure that buildings constructed in an earthquake-prone area would be made more of reinforced concrete and the like. I know, there's a lot of places in California that are brick-built, Old Sacramento comes to mind, but again, those locations are ollllld and were built way before modern building codes were instituted. :-\

Also, the curvy train tracks made me giggle, and I did the quizzical dog head-tilt when viewing the shifty/broken bridges. Scary stuff.

I see they have a problem with Chinese "church" vans there as well. Shame.

Since nobody got killed in the quake, we can pretty much laugh at all the piles of bricks and smashed-up cars.

Alien Robot: Walker: The sand volcanoes are my favorite.

We usually call those 'anthills' here in the US.

Zing!

One of the images that caught a lot of attention over the weekend here is Aus is the building that lost all its walls, and inside there are a few tables set for dinner, with glass bottles still sitting pretty on the tabletops.

Now, back to theage.com.au, where there are gratuitous images of massive flooding in northern Victoria

/Disaster porn week!

Nearly a quarter of million people died in Haiti with a similar earthquake. Not a single death in NZ. Similar magnitude quake. What gives?

ZenGuru: Nearly a quarter of million people died in Haiti with a similar earthquake. Not a single death in NZ. Similar magnitude quake. What gives?

Rebar.

And building codes.

Meh.

/Live in California. Seen it all.

ZenGuru: Nearly a quarter of million people died in Haiti with a similar earthquake. Not a single death in NZ. Similar magnitude quake. What gives?

You've heard the story of the Three Little Piggies? The piggies in NZ live in houses of brick. The piggies in Haiti live in houses of trash and AIDS.

Andromeda: Yep, the brick-and-mortar structures are old, or at least as old as stuff gets in NZ (100+ years). Christchurch is an interesting city because it's trying to be British so hard that it feels more British than Britain despite being half a world away- that perfect old architecture, trolleys in the streets, even punters on the Avon River.

Very pretty, but not ideal for earthquakes. Well certainly better than what happened in Haiti from a quake of similar strength.

Oh dear. :(

I thought as much, because it looked like some buildings shrugged it off, and others looked like Lego structures that had been set upon by a destructive three-year-old.


thenateman: Rebar.

And building codes.

Beat me to it. Also, not having a bajillion people living in a couple of square miles does it, too. ;)

Wanted for questioning...

turntable slave: OMG GOD WAS PUNISHING THEM




Yes, yes he was.

Three Crooked Squirrels: I'm having a hard time figuring out how this happened. Pretty wild.

I'd guess the rails were crushed up along their axis, or as we see it, vertically.

hestheone: Meh. /Live in California. Seen it all.

Well, I guess that's it, then. Thread's over, everyone. Sorry. Hestheone has seen it all before. He even took the time to post about it. Thoughtful of him, letting us all know. At least he didn't keep us wondering what he thought. Yep, he's seen it all. Seen it all. Nothing anyone can add to that, is there?

ZenGuru: Nearly a quarter of million people died in Haiti with a similar earthquake. Not a single death in NZ. Similar magnitude quake. What gives?

Maybe a certain group of people are lazier about building quality? However, i would have assumed they could have run from their buildings faster, so in theory, it should have evened everything out.

"So, Pat Robertson, what did the Kiwi's do in incur God's wrath?

ZenGuru: Nearly a quarter of million people died in Haiti with a similar earthquake. Not a single death in NZ. Similar magnitude quake. What gives?

Building Codes.

Ego edo infantia cattus 2010-09-06 07:37:22 PM

turntable slave: OMG GOD WAS PUNISHING THEM

Yes, yes he was.

This is what you get for driving a mini-van.

ZenGuru: Nearly a quarter of million people died in Haiti with a similar earthquake. Not a single death in NZ. Similar magnitude quake. What gives?

Aside from the obvious answers given already, the NZ quake happened in the wee hours of the morning when most people were in bed and not walking down streets where they would be pummeled by bricks.